Menendez’s Iran warnings ignored; what’s next?

When Iran was in the incipient stages of its nuclear program, Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ) sponsored the Iran Nuclear Proliferation Prevention Act of 1998, a bill that passed in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate. Seventeen years later, Menendez looks back with concern on how his initial calls to action on the nuclear issue went unheeded.

“We had not listened to the alarm bells … I wish others were right and I wrong, but, I was right and they were wrong,” Menendez said, referring to his colleagues in Congress. “We have allowed Iran to advance to the point that we are now willing to accept that a great amount of [nuclear] infrastructure will stay in place, even though it may be in violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions.”  

The senator speaks with conviction and consistency about his beliefs, particularly about his support for Israel.

“It is in the [American] national security interest to have a strong, unwavering relationship with the state of Israel, to help the people defend themselves and live in peace in the land of their ancestors,” Menendez said. He is adamant about assuring that Congress will have the opportunity to fully review a final nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers — hence his introduction, with Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015.

“Preventing Iran from attaining nuclear weapons capability is urgent for our own nation’s security as well as for that of Israel,” he said.

“Any deal, to be a good deal, has to be built on more than monitoring a one-year [nuclear] breakout capacity. If a year is not enough time for us to do anything other than to exercise a military response, it is not a good deal.”