Cotton says US can set Iran nuclear program back to ‘day zero’ by war

Hawkish US Senator Tom Cotton has threatened Iran with a military attack to set its nuclear program back to “day zero” despite a nuclear agreement reached between Tehran, Washington and the five world powers in Vienna last month.

“We can set them back to day zero,” Cotton told the Israel Diplomatic Correspondents Association on Tuesday. “There is no doubt that the United States has the capability to do that.”

The freshman Republican senator from Arkansas stressed that it was very important for the US to keep the threat of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

“You can destroy facilities. I don’t think any military expert in the United States or elsewhere would say the US military is not capable to setting Iran’s nuclear facilities back to day zero,” he said.

“Can we eliminate it forever? No, because any advanced industrialized country can develop nuclear weapons in four to seven years, from zero. But we can set them back to day zero,” he added.

Cotton, who is known for his close links with American neoconservatives, reportedly received one million dollars from the Emergency Committee for Israel, a neoconservative group associated with Israel lobby, just before the last US election. The group was founded in mid-2010 by William Kristol, a US neoconservative political analyst.

In a former interview in April he called on President Barack Obama not to take the military option off the table, saying a strike against the Islamic Republic would go much smoother than the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The United States and Britain launched a four-day bombing campaign on Iraqi targets from December 16, 1998, to December 19, 1998.

Iran and the P5+1 group -- the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany –  reached an agreement on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in the Austrian capital of Vienna on July 14.

Under the agreement, restrictions will be put on Iran’s nuclear activities in exchange for, among other things, the removal of all economic and financial bans against the Islamic Republic.

Congress is reviewing the recent agreement and will vote on it in September.

Congressional Republicans claim that they have enough votes to pass a resolution of disapproval, but the White House insists it has enough Democratic support to uphold a presidential veto.

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