Cheney on Obama Confronting Iran’s Aggression: ‘I’ll Believe It When I See It’
THIESSEN: “The last question is from Senator Tom Cotton. The president has said that he will confront Iran’s regional aggression after this deal is implemented. What steps should this confrontation include to stop Iran’s aggression and reassure Israel and our Sunni partners?”
CHENEY: “I’ll believe it when I see it. I am -- I have serious reservations after you pour over $100 billion back into Iran, you lift sanctions and embargoes on things like conventional weapons and ICBMs, you take off the embargoes on doing business, for example with the IRDC, with the Quds Force, I think you've given them an enormous shot in the arm in terms of their ability to pursue their terrorist activities and their support for illicit regimes. And then you're going to turn around and mount military operations somehow to take them down? It doesn't fit. It doesn't calculate in my mind. I think if the -- if the problems we have with the nuclear agreement in and of itself weren't enough, when you add to that the last minute addition of lifting the sanctions and the embargoes on ballistic missiles, on conventional weapons, then that in and of itself does enormous damage. So I’m afraid that the idea that somehow we can contain Iran afterwards is going to take an awful lot of effort, major effort. We may have no choice but to do that, but as I mention in here, the state of the Defense Department's budget these days is significantly depressed. Ray Odierno, who just stepped down as the army chief of staff, said the readiness level in the United States army today is the lowest it's ever been in the history of the army, and that's over 200 years. So we've got a situation where we badly need to rebuild our military capability, especially if we're going to be in the business of trying to contain the damage that Iran is going to do with all of the relief that we've given them in terms of funds, in terms of lifting sanctions, in terms of reversing course on limiting their ICBM force and so forth.”
