Following are parts of the responses by some lawmakers to the UN report that Iran is working specifically on a nuclear program.
Senator Gillibrand (D-NY): “Today’s report should serve as a wake-up call to the world community. As the evidence mounts of Iran’s nuclear advances, it is clear the Iranian regime is becoming an existential threat to the United States and our allies and we must act quickly to enact a new round of international sanctions. “I urge Congress to pass the Iran, North Korea, and Syria Sanctions Consolidation Act, my bi-partisan legislation that increases economic pressure on Iran. This strong legislation gives the President improved tools to help stop Iran’s nuclear program. We must cut off ties with any company that buys oil and gas from Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. We must keep dangerous weapons out of the hands of all hostile nations. We must stand together and make it crystal clear – we cannot, and will not, tolerate a nuclear Iran.
Senator Joe Lieberman (I-CT): “The Obama Administration deserves credit for rallying the international community to put unprecedented diplomatic and economic pressure on the Iranian regime. But sanctions are a means to an end, not an end unto themselves. And the fact is, nothing the U.S. and its international partners has done has changed Iran’s egregious and murderous behavior—its pursuit of nuclear weapons, its sponsorship of terrorism, or its repression of its own people. On the contrary, in all three of these areas, the Iranian regime’s behavior has only has grown more emboldened and reckless… If the Iranian regime
acquires a nuclear weapons capability, it will be because our leaders allowed it to happen. It is still within our power to stop it. But it will require more than further incremental pressure—which is to say, more of what we have already been doing, that clearly hasn’t been working.”
