Full transcript. Excerpt below:
Senators, welcome to you all. Let’s get right to Iran where we have seen some significant developments overnight. Senators, the front page of the New York Times this morning has this story, “Report Says Iran has Data to Make a Nuclear Bomb.”
This is about a confidential analysis by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the IAEA. The Times writes, quote, “Most dramatically, the report says the agency assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device based on highly enriched uranium.”
These excerpts also suggest that Iran has done much research and testing to perfect nuclear arms, like making high-voltage detonators, firing test explosives and designing warheads.
We should point out the Times is following up on some of the reporting by the Associated Press and other sites on this secret IAEA report.
So, Senators, your thought on this report and how or should it factor into the negotiations with Iran.
Senator Graham first.
GRAHAM: Oh, absolutely. I think one of the things that we’d want to do is challenge the Iranians to give us some access to what’s alleged in this report.
Clearly, they’re not developing a nuclear program for peaceable purposes. This report is just yet more evidence in a long line of evidence that the Iranians are trying to develop a nuclear weapon, and half measures won’t work.
We need to get on with challenging the Iranians with some deadlines and ultimatums, quite frankly.
BAIER: Senator Casey? Senator Casey?
No, we’ll turn to Senator Bayh first. Your thought on this report and...
BAYH: Well, Bret, it shows that we need to bring a real sense of urgency to this issue. The clock is running, and the Iranians will have a nuclear capability before long if something doesn’t happen to change their minds.
So we need to have tough sanctions, financial and economic. We need to do them now. Have real deadlines and consequences if they don’t live up to their word, because they have lied repeatedly in the past.
But you know, we are on a path toward a nuclear Iran which is an unacceptable course. If we’re going to avoid the very painful dilemma of either having to live with that or taking military action to prevent that, which may ultimately be a choice we have to face, we need to act now on the financial and economic side.
BAIER: Senator Chambliss, has the administration taken the right point of view here?
CHAMBLISS: Well, I think so. Obviously, there have been some significant high-level discussions both with our allies as well as beginning talks with Iran right now. So I think the administration realizes the seriousness of this.
And when you combine, Bret, the revelations relative to the knowledge that Iran has concerning the manufacture of a weapon with the fact that we now have publicly disclosed the other facility in Iran at Qom where, for the last several months, we’ve been monitoring their operations -- and that is not a facility where the Iranians are going to be manufacturing enriched uranium for nuclear power purposes.
It’s not big enough. They don’t have enough centrifuges for that. So it’s pretty clear that Iran is headed down the track of getting a nuclear weapon. They have the knowledge. They now have a secret facility that’s been disclosed.
What else do they have? I think that’s the question the administration needs to ask.
BAIER: Senator Casey, the head of the IAEA, Mohamed ElBaradei, arrived in Tehran on Saturday to arrange this inspection of the facility that Senator Chambliss mentioned in Qom, near the holy city of Qom.
He announced at a news conference this morning that Iran has agreed to let inspectors in there on October 25th. That is three weeks, not two weeks, from now, as the president forecast. He also said that Iran has agreed to, quote, “in principle” allow some of its low enriched uranium to be transported out of the country to Russia or France to be enriched to higher levels for nuclear fuel.
So the president has called these talks a constructive beginning. How do you see these talks?
CASEY: Well, what we heard this week was certainly encouraging, but I think we have to be very focused on giving the president and giving other parts of our government, including pension funds, the ability to impose sanctions.
We should not have to allow the talks to be an end in themselves. That’s why I and others have supported legislation that I know my colleagues support to provide a broad range of sanctions.
And in particular, Senator Brownback and I have legislation to allow pension funds to divest -- or I should say to allow pension fund entities around the country to divest pension fund assets out of companies that are doing business with Iran’s energy sector, up to a $20 million level.
So I think it’s critically important that we have all of the tools on the table to impose sanctions, even unilaterally if necessary.
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