Chris Murphy

I do not want to leave any room for doubt at all that we have any concerns that this material, when it ultimately arrives in Russia, will not be subject to safeguards.

There should be a response, but whether we like it or not, this is not new.

This agreement ends a culture of permissiveness that had allowed for the Iranians to conduct a nuclear program that was unprecedented in scope.

And frankly, the report that was issued by the IAEA describes a culture of permissiveness that allowed for the Iranians up to 2003 and in some respects after 2003 to conduct a military-scale nuclear weapons research program.

This is a predicate to action, and I think there is agreement that that is an absolute necessity.

I support the agreement not because I am an apologist for the administration but because I think it is the right thing to do for American national security.

If Iran decides to rush toward a nuclear weapon, there is no agreement that can stop them.

I believe U.S. sanctions are the most important part of all the sanctions.

But I think it is just important to concede that there are a lot more examples of where we signed diplomatic agreements that turned out very well for the United States.

There are undoubtedly plenty of examples in which diplomacy has gone wrong, in which we signed a deal that did not work out for the best interests of American national security.

I do not think that is possible.

I think the benefits outweigh the risks.

I would just ask people to be reasonable. There are more consequences than those laid out by Senator Murphy, but each one of the ones he laid out are pretty consequential.

So when they are enriching like crazy and we have passed up diplomacy and we have passed up the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which option is left to us to enforce this?

If this agreement is not passed--is not agreed to--it does not meet Congress' approval, and the sanctions are gone, and Iran goes back to enriching, you can hear the hue and cry right now.

We would be turning away from the NPT. That is, part of this vote would be basically saying we do not trust the NPT.

There is nothing in this agreement built on trust. It is all a matter of verification.

The Supreme Leader highly distrusts us, and we highly distrust him in return.

This is not ultimately a referendum. This is a choice, and if you reject this deal, then you have got to be pretty apocalyptic about how badly this deal will go down if you accept those broad parameters as the alternative.

This is a choice between two sets of consequences, a set of consequences that flow forward if we approve the deal, and then a different set of consequences that flow forward if Congress rejects this deal.

What are our options if the United States walks away from this?

Will we be able to use the powers we have used in the past and build upon them to take action against Iran?

I worry that you may misread where the reluctance lies in Congress today.

I think we are just not accepting the premise of the sanctions in the first place if we extrapolate and expand it to all sorts of other behavior in the region.

I certainly believed, when I was voting for those sanctions, that, should Iran choose a different path when it comes to a nuclear weapons future, that we would engage in a conversation about withdrawing some of those sanctions.