Campaign Statements — Iran

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“Syria is a puppet state of Iran…[Obama] is afraid to stand up to Iran.”

“Syria is a puppet state of Iran. They are a threat not just to Israel, but they have been a complete destabilizing force within Lebanon, which is another problem for Israel and Hezbollah. They are a country that we can do no worse than the leadership in Syria today, which is not the case, and some of the other countries that we readily got ourselves involved in.

So it’s sort of remarkable to me we would have—here again, it’s the timidness of this president in dealing with the Iranian threat, because Syria and Iran is an axis. And the president—while he couldn’t reach out deliberately to Iran but did reach out immediately to Syria and established an embassy there. And the only reason he removed that embassy was because it was threatened of being overtaken, not because he was objecting to what was going on in Syria.

This president has obviously a very big problem in standing up to the Iranians in any form. If this would have been any other country, given what was going on and the mass murders that we’re seeing there, this president would have quickly joined the international community, which is calling for his ouster and the stop of this, but he’s not. He’s not. Because he’s afraid to stand up to Iran.”

CATEGORIES: The Arab Spring | Iran | Rick Santorum |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“Why go to war so carelessly?”

“If you want to worry about nuclear weapons, worry about the nuclear weapons that were left over from the Soviet Union. They’re still floating around. They don’t have them all detailed. So we’re ready to go to war. I say going to war rapidly like this is risky and it’s reckless.

Now, if they are so determined to go to war, the only thing I plead with you for, if this is the case, is do it properly. Ask the people and ask the Congress for a declaration of war. This is war and people are going to die. And you have got to get a declaration of war.

And just to go and start fighting—but the sanctions are already backfiring. And all that we do is literally doing the opposite. When we’ve been attacked, we all came together. When we put them under attack, they get together and it neutralizes that. They rally around their leaders.

So what we’re doing is literally enhancing their power. Think of the sanctions we dealt with Castro. Fifty years and Castro is still there. It doesn’t work. So I would say a different approach. We talked to the Soviets during the Cuban crisis. We at least can talk to somebody who we do not have proof that he has a weapon. Why go to war so carelessly?”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Ron Paul |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“The Iranians can’t possibly attack anybody.”

“I disagree because we don’t know if they have a weapon. As a matter of fact, there’s no evidence that they have it. There is no evidence. Israel claims they do not have it and our government doesn’t. I don’t want them to get a weapon. But I think what we’re doing is encouraging them to have a weapon because they feel threatened. If you look at a map of Iran, we have 45 bases around their country, plus our submarines.

The Iranians can’t possibly attack anybody. And we’re worrying about the possibility of one nuclear weapon. Now, just think about the Cold War. The Soviets had 30,000 of them. And we talked to them. The Soviets killed 100 million people and the Chinese, and we worked our way out of it.”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Ron Paul |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“The radicals in Egypt and…in Libya…the president is more than happy to help them out.”

“Here’s what I said—we need to get this—these pro-American Iranians who are there, who want freedom, want democracy, and want somebody to help them and support them. Well, we put some money out there and guess what? Barack Obama cut it when he came into office. And when the Green Revolution rose, the pro-democracy prose, we had nothing. We had no connection, no correlation and we did absolutely nothing to help them.

In the meantime, when the radicals in Egypt and the radicals in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood, when they rise against either a feckless leader or a friend of ours in Egypt, the president is more than happy to help them out.

When they’re going up against a dangerous theocratic regime that wants to wipe out the state of Israel, that wants to dominate the radical Islamic world and take on the great Satan, the United States, we do nothing. That is a president that must go. And you want a leader who will take them on? I’ll do that.”

CATEGORIES: The Arab Spring | Iran | Rick Santorum |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“I have been on the trail of Iran…for about eight years now.”

“I would say that if you’re looking for a president to be elected in this country that will send that very clear message to Iran as to the seriousness of the American public to stop them from getting a nuclear weapon, there would be no better candidate than me because I have been on the trail of Iran and trying to advocate for stopping them getting a nuclear weapon for about eight years now.

I was the author of a bill back in 2008 that talked about sanctions on a nuclear program that our intelligence community said didn’t exist and had the President of the United States, President Bush oppose me for two years.

And, by the way, so did Joe Biden on the floor of the Senate, and Barack Obama. I always say if you want to know what foreign policy position to take, find out what Joe Biden’s position is and take the opposite opinion and you’ll be right 100 percent of the time. But they opposed me. He actively opposed me. We did pass that bill eventually at the end of 2006, and it was to fund the pro- democracy movement, $100 million a year.”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Rick Santorum |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“[Military options] are not just on the table. They are in our hand.”

“This is a president who has made it clear through his administration in almost every communication we’ve had so far, that he does not want Israel to take action. That he opposes military action. This is a president who should have instead communicated to Iran that we are prepared, that we are considering military options. They’re not just on the table. They are in our hand. We must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. If they do, the world changes. America will be at risk. And some day, nuclear weaponry will be used. If I am president, that will not happen. If we reelect Barack Obama, it will happen.”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Mitt Romney |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“[Obama] should have put in place criplling sanctions against Iran.”

“Nothing in my view is as serious a failure as [President Obama’s] failure to deal with Iran appropriately. This president should have put in place crippling sanctions against Iran, he did not. He decided to give Russia their number one foreign policy objective, removal of our missile defense sites from Eastern Europe and got nothing in return. He could have gotten crippling sanctions against Iran. He did not. When dissident voices took to the street in Iran to protest a stolen election there, instead of standing with them, he bowed to the election.”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Mitt Romney |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“We simply cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weaponry.”

“Look, the price of gasoline pales in comparison to the idea of Ahmadinejad with nuclear weapons. Ahmadinejad having fissile material that he can give to Hezbollah and Hamas and that they can bring into Latin America and potentially bring across the border into the United States to let off dirty bombs here. I mean, or more sophisticated bombs here, this—we simply cannot allow Iran to have nuclear weaponry.”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Mitt Romney |

Wednesday February 22, 2012

“There are moments when you preempt…if you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons.”

“If an Israeli prime minister, haunted by the history of the Holocaust, recognizing that three nuclear weapons is a holocaust in Israel, if an Israeli prime minister calls me and says, I believe in the defense of my country. This goes back to a point that Congressman Paul raised that we probably disagree on. I do believe there are moments when you preempt. If you think a madman is about to have nuclear weapons and you think that madman is going to use those nuclear weapons, then you have an absolute moral obligation to defend the lives of your people by eliminating the capacity to get nuclear weapons.”

CATEGORIES: Iran | Israel/Palestine | Newt Gingrich |