CBS’ Bob Schieffer on Sunday pressed Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) to defend the open letter he wrote warning Iran that any potential nuclear deal could expire at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency.
At one point, Schieffer asked the senator why he hadn’t reached out to the U.S.’ other nuclear adversaries, too.
“Senator, are you planning to contact any other of our adversaries around the country?” Schieffer asked. “For example, are you planning to check with the North Koreans to make sure that they know that any deal has to be approved by the Congress?”
Cotton smiled when Schieffer brought up North Korea.
“Right now I and most every other senator is focused on stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon,” he responded. “That’s why it’s so important that we communicated this message straight to Iran, because they’re not hearing it from Geneva.”
Cotton returned to the matter of North Korea later in the interview. He echoed an argument former Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney made in a recent op-ed on Iran: prior deals with the North Koreans failed to stop them from developing a nuclear bomb, so a deal with Iran wouldn’t likely hold up, either.
“Now the world has to live with the consequences of a nuclear North Korea,” Cotton said. “I don’t want the world to live with the consequences of a nuclear Iran.”
Watch below via CBS News:
