Thursday, during an appearance on Fox News, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) expressed his concerns about the framework of a deal between the United States and Iran to cease hostilities.
The Arkansas Republican said he was concerned that if sanctions on Iranian oil were eased, it could enable the Iranian regime to spend money on drone stockpiles and financing Hamas or Hezbollah.
“[W]e want to get your reaction to this deal and whether or not you think it’s a good deal, and whether or not you believe that this will prove that Iran has become a ‘normal country’ and is going to change their stripes from 47 years,” “The Story” host Martha MacCallum said.
Cotton replied, “Iran is a revolutionary terrorist regime. It has been for 47 years. It’s been killing and maiming Americans. It tried to kill my soldiers and me when we were in Iraq. President Trump deserves credit for making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades through military strikes now, going back six years across two terms. And I know our Kansans are pleased with the recent decline in gasoline prices and I hope that continues. But I do have concerns that certain aspects of this deal are step in the wrong direction. For instance, we’re going to lift sanctions on Iran’s oil exports right away. And based on their pre-war rates of production and recent prices for a barrel of oil, you’re looking at somewhere between $150 million and $200 million a day. So that’s 400 or $4.5 billion to $6 billion every single month.”
“That’s a lot of money, and we know that this terrorist revolutionary regime is not going to spend that money on daycares or onhospitalsl,” he continued. “They’re going to use it to rebuild their drone stockpiles, their missiles to fund Hamas and to fund Hezbollah. I have other concerns as well. There are certain parts of this memorandum that are a bit vaguer about Iran’s ability to access up to $100 billion of frozen funds or whether Iran can impose tolls on the Strait of Hormuz after two months. We’ll need more explanation there. I hope President Trump won’t allow those things to happen because again, he deserves enormous credit for making Iran weaker than it’s been in decades. And we need to make sure that we don’t squander the leverage that we built across six years from the strike of Qasem Soleimani to Operation Midnight Hammer and Operation Epic Fury.”
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