Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) took to the Senate floor Monday to question President Barack Obama’s decision to trust and negotiate with Iran’s Ayatollah.
Citing Iran’s track record of funding terrorism, inciting hatred towards Israel and America, and its likelihood not to keep their word, Cotton used one of his first floor speeches to disparage the president’s attempts to cut a nuclear deal.
Cotton took aim at President Obama’s message to Iranians, in which he encouraged Iranians to push their leadership to accept a nuclear deal. Cotton said the president’s strategy was naive.
"Let’s be clear about one thing—Iranians who speak up just tend to disappear into secret prisons or wind up hanging on cranes by the neck," Cotton said. "Worse, by acting as if public opinion matters to the Ayatollahs, President Obama is treating Iran as if it were a legitimate democracy, not a brutal theocratic dictatorship. No president should legitimize such a regime."
Cotton used direct quotes from the Ayatollah to cut into Obama’s rhetoric of a mutually beneficial deal in the works. He criticized the president for validating the Iranian government, whose leader threatened the very country he is in the middle of nuclear negotiations with.
"When someone chants ‘Yes, certainly, death to America’ we should take him at his word for it," Cotton said.
The Ayatollah has told his people that America needs nuclear negotiations more than Iran does. Cotton said President Obama has made that all too apparent to the rogue state.
Obama has extended the negotiations twice, conceded on multiple points, and has compromised America’s relationship with Israel in a desperate effort to cut a deal with the Iranian regime.
Cotton used the Ayatollah’s own words to blast the president for succumbing to the revolutionary minded leader. The freshman senator dealt crushing blows with each and every quote he read out on the floor, asking the president why he would ever want to enable a horrible man with ill intentions.
"Evil men rarely cloak their wicked intent, and I urge my fellow senators and all Americans to pay attention to Ayatollah Khamenei’s word, " Cotton said.