In a speech given at the American Enterprise Institute today, Florida Senator Marco Rubio said "We need to make absolutely clear to Iran’s leaders that sanctions will continue to increase until they agree to completely abandon any enrichment or reprocessing capability."
He spoke just as officials from six world powers were meeting in Geneva in a new attempt to reach an agreement with Iran on its nuclear program. Iran has vowed not stop to stop enrichment, or even temporarily halt enrichment, even though it's been part of several United Nations Security Council resolutions.
But it's not clear that if a deal being by the P6 worked on would demand that Iran stop enrichment.
In the current New Yorker, reporter Laura Secor writes:
Most observers expect that an agreement would allow Iran to continue enriching uranium to five per cent, the level necessary to fuel a power plant, while disabling plutonium facilities, limiting the number and the type of uranium centrifuges, and imposing intrusive inspections on nuclear activities to insure that they are not turned to military use.
The magazine reports that Iran has invested more than a hundred billion dollars in its nuclear program. In 2003, it had a hundred and sixty centrifuges (the devices used to enrich uranium); today, it has more than sixteen thousand.
Today Secretary of State John Kerry said today that the U.S. and Afghanistan have agreed on a bilateral security agreement that would govern the presence of American troops in the country after the NATO combat mission ends next year. He did not announce how many troops would stay beyond 2014.
The Obama administration was unable to come up with an agreement to keep troops in Iraq after 2011, a point that Rubio referenced in his speech, as violence continues there:
"The President’s failure to negotiate a security cooperation agreement with Iraq was yet another instance in which this administration ambled aimlessly through a situation that should have prompted careful strategic maneuvering. It ensured the return of Al Qaeda to Iraq and the creeping authoritarianism of a Maliki government increasingly in the sway of Tehran. And in Afghanistan, the White House has often shown a lack of commitment that has put at risk the very real gains we and the Afghans have made."
Rubio's speech dripped with disdain for the president's foreign policy, though he could have been taking aim at Rand Paul and other "isolationists" within the GOP with this particular passage:
"Imagine if the beaches of Normandy were never touched by American boots. Imagine if our foreign aid had not helped alleviate many of the world’s worst crises. Imagine if nuclear proliferation had continued unfettered by U.S. influence. It is no exaggeration to say that the majority of the world’s democracies may not exist had America remained disengaged."
"Next we must acknowledge that there are threats to America today that are just as dire, just as pressing as any we faced in the last century."
This article appears in Nov 21-27, 2013.