Dan Coats: “I rise to discuss what many believe is the most dangerous threat to our national security, and that is a nuclear Iran.…”

“I rise to discuss what many believe is the most dangerous threat to our national security, and that is a nuclear Iran. Over the past few weeks, there have been a lot of discussions about the Obama administration's ongoing negotiations with Iran and what the role of Congress should be. I believe the debate this past week in Congress over how to best address this issue has distracted us from what I believe are the two key objectives in our effort to prevent Iran from achieving nuclear weapons capability. First, Iran must be prevented from getting the bomb, and second, we in the Senate must decide the best way to guarantee that result. For the past 10 years, I have been working hard to find the most acceptable and best way to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons capability. Note that word ``capability.'' For me, it has long been not enough to just announce that we must not allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon. I am determined that Iran must not get the technical capability to manufacture such a weapon because a nuclear weapons-capable Iran is as dangerous as a nuclear-armed Iran because it throws up a cloud of ambiguity about its formal intentions. There are many in the policy communities who find some mistaken sense of comfort from the intelligence agencies' current view that Iran has not yet made a formal decision to develop a nuclear weapon. This is a delusion.…”