USA Today - Rubio: Keep Heat on Iran on Nuclear Talks

Op-Ed

By Marco Rubio

To successfully negotiate with someone, you need to understand and be honest about who is sitting across the table from you.

From Russia and Syria, to North Korea and now Iran, this has been a failure of the Obama administration's foreign policy.

We would all like to wake up tomorrow to the news that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has decided to abandon his nuclear weapon ambitions. But especially on matters of national security, we should not be guided simply by our hopes. We must be guided by reality.

The reality is that no matter how much Iran's political leaders say they do not have plans to build a nuclear weapon, their actions say something else. They have dramatically increased their ability to enrich uranium, and they continue to spend millions of dollars on their nuclear program and on developing long-range missiles.

We hear all this talk about how Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, may be a reformer, but he is also someone who has bragged about how he used negotiations to buy time to increase Iran's enrichment capacity. And in the end, even if he is a reformer, he is not the ultimate decision maker. The ultimate decision maker is Iran's supreme leader. And so far, no one has accused him of being a reformer.

The main reason why Iran's leaders are making noises about negotiating with the world now is because, over the last few years, the United States and the European Union have imposed significant sanctions on Iran. Those sanctions are starting to hurt the regime.

It has made it more difficult for them to export terrorism around the world. It has hurt their effort to continue to buy parts for their nuclear and missile programs. The sanctions are also causing many Iranians to ask why their government is going to such great lengths to develop these capabilities.

As a result of all this, their plan now is very simple: they are trying to see if they can get these sanctions suspended or lifted, without having to give up too much. Then, at some point in the future, when the world has moved on to some other issues, they can quickly take the final steps to build a bomb.

That is why, as talks between the so-called P5+1 group of nations and Iran are about to restart, we are at a critical juncture. We should meet with Iran and see if they are serious, but we cannot put at risk the hard-earned leverage that took so long to assemble.

First, we need to remember who we are dealing with. This is a regime that brutalizes its own people and denies them their basic freedoms. We are talking about a regime that has earned the distrust of the entire world through its secretive nuclear program. It's a regime that admits foul play only when caught red-handed. A regime that supports terrorism, including the killing of Americans, and has had an active hand in fueling conflicts that destabilize its neighbors and threaten U.S. allies.

The erosion of trust in Tehran is simply too great. And so the bottom line in any negotiations should be clear: the only way sanctions on Iran will be lifted or suspended is if they agree to completely abandon any capability for enrichment or reprocessing. Iran has a right to a peaceful civilian nuclear energy program, but it does not have the right to enrich or reprocess.

Holding this line is especially important in light of Iran's repeated and blatant disregard of its international obligations. Even a limited enrichment program and possession of sensitive reprocessing technologies is unacceptable because it would keep the path to nuclear weapons open. In fact, until Iran agrees to abandon enrichment and reprocessing, Congress should move to implement a new round of additional sanctions without delay.

And at some point, Congress should consider making it very clear that if it becomes necessary, the United States reserves the right to take military action to prevent Iran from continuing to advance its nuclear weapons program.

The United States and the international community have succeeded in bringing Iran to the negotiating table through firm action. We all hope those talks work out. But Iran does not have forever to prove they are serious. We cannot allow them to continue to use these talks to buy themselves time and space while they pursue a nuclear weapons capability. We cannot allow them to use these talks to continue to spread terror and undermine their neighbors.

As our diplomats sit down in Geneva this week, let's be honest about who we are dealing with and what they are trying to achieve. Let's not gloss over their record of murder, brutality, lies and obfuscation. That moral clarity, not desperation for a deal, is what sets us apart from them and is what will prevent us from waking up one day to discover a nuclear Iran.

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