Sen. Lindsey Graham Monday said there are only two things that are stopping Iran from having a nuclear weapon: President Donald Trump and Israel.
"The Europeans are worthless," the South Carolina Republican told Fox News' "Fox and Friends." "They're not threatened by Iran. They want to do business with Iran. If they continue to enrich at the levels they're talking about, Israel is in a box. We're headed toward a military conflict unless Iran rachets it down."
Graham's comments come after a weekend opinion piece he wrote with retired Gen. Jack Keane for The Wall Street Journal, in which they said the United States should call Iran's bluff on enriched uranium and offer a way to get nuclear power.
"You know they actually want a nuclear weapon," Graham said Monday. "You don't build a power plant under a mountain if all you want peaceful power. You can have nuclear power without enriching and reprocessing. You make a bomb enriching and reprocessing uranium and plutonium."
Graham said the United States should offer Iran a deal where it can have a nuclear power program, where it would get its fuel from Russia or China, but don't let Iran enrich uranium.
He said he knows Ayatollah Ali Khamenei would reject the plan, "because he wants a bomb. Smoke him out."
Meanwhile, Graham said he would keep sanctions in place against Iran, and tell the country "all bets are off" if it reactivates its cold-water producing reactor, which would be a provocation to Israel and to the United States.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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