Sen. John Kennedy (R-La.) thanked the United Kingdom, France and Germany for reintroducing sanctions against Iran last week but said that “we need to talk about the rest of the story.”
The rest of the story, the Louisiana Republican said on the Senate floor, is making sure that the sanctions have teeth.
“We have still got to enforce them, and the United States needs to take the lead on doing that,” Kennedy said.
“I feel for the Iranian people,” he said. “I don’t feel any sympathy for the ayatollah. We are just going to have to choke him to death economically.”
Kennedy noted that the UK, France and Germany, known as the E3, were reinstating sanctions which were suspended under former U.S. President Barack Obama’s Iran deal, the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In 2015, “Iran said, ‘Pinky promise, we will stop building a nuclear weapon. You remove the sanctions,’” Kennedy said.
The senator called Obama “naive” in agreeing to the deal.
But even with recent progress against the Iranian regime, Kennedy warned about becoming careless.
Just because Washington destroyed “many of Iran’s facilities to make that weapon does not mean that the issue has been resolved,” he said. “Iran has refused to come to the table, even still, to negotiate a settlement, a new JCPOA.”
Kennedy prefers that Tehran negotiate. “I don’t expect that to happen,” he said.
