Cotton on Extensions: Means ‘We’re Negotiating from a Position of Weakness’

COTTON: "Unfortunately, we had the position of strength in 2013. The president then gave up the cards that we held by loosening sanctions just to get Iran to the negotiating table. They have been calling the shots for over a year now and our insistence at staying at the negotiating table past the president's own announced deadline that he said we would not break, just goes to show we're negotiating from a position of weakness ...

If you look at what happened in Switzerland just in the last 12 or 24 hours. The foreign ministers of France, China and Russia have all left. Yet, Secretary of State Kerry is still there pleading with a deal. The time has come to get back to a position of strength and drive a hard bargain and not accept the bargain Iran wants ...

One of the reason our founding fathers insisted that Congress approve international agreements, even though the president negotiates them, is to protect the American people from unwise dangerous agreements but it also gives the president stronger negotiating leverage internationally because he should be able to tell our adversaries that he alone cannot commit the United States to binding agreements. The Congress has to do so. And Democrats and Republicans alike in the Congress are insisting that we get a deal that blocks Iran from getting a nuclear weapon not just today and tomorrow, but ten and fifteen years from now as well."