Sen. Cotton Urges Further Disclosure On Iran Deal

A trip late last week to Europe unearthed further questions about a nuclear weapons deal with the United States and Iran, Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., said Wednesday.

Cotton, who traveled with Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Kan. to Vienna, Austria, met with officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency about the deal announced earlier this month by the Obama administration.

During the meeting, IAEA officials told Cotton and Pompeo that two side deals between Iran and the IAEA as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action would remain secret with the information not available to anyone, Cotton said.

The deals involve an agreement on the inspection of the Parchin military base, while the other involves how the IAEA and Iran will resolve outstanding issues on possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, Cotton said.

The nature of the deals drew the ire of Cotton.

“In failing to secure the disclosure of these secret side deals, the Obama administration is asking Congress and the American people to trust, but not verify. What we cannot do is trust the terror-sponsoring, anti-American, outlaw regime that governs Iran and that has been deceiving the world on its nuclear weapons work for years,” Cotton said. “Congress’s evaluation of this deal must be based on hard facts and full information. That we are only now discovering that parts of this dangerous agreement are being kept secret begs the question of what other elements may also be secret and entirely free from public scrutiny.”

Cotton said Parchin is a “critical linchpin in the Iranian nuclear program” that has faced questions about long-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons being developed there.

The debate over the side deals also drew questions from other senators.

“Senators Corker and [Ben] Cardin sent a private letter to Secretary [John] Kerry requesting two additional documents associated with the Iran nuclear agreement that were left out of the materials required to be submitted to Congress per the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act that the president signed into law,” a spokesman for Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told The Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin Wednesday.

However, President Obama said Tuesday night that the overall deal will help avoid a nuclear Iran.

“We have taken off the table what would be a catastrophic problem if they got a weapon,” Obama said on The Daily Show.