You can watch Senator King’s questioning HERE, or download broadcast quality video HERE 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Angus King, Chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, today pressed a top Pentagon official for his assessment of the benefits and drawbacks of returning to a nuclear deal with Iran. In a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, King asked General Kenneth McKenzie – Commander of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) – if a renewed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) to halt Iran’s development of nuclear weapons in exchange for sanction relief would be an acceptable tradeoff. During his questioning Senator King specifically emphasized the dangers a nuclear-capable Iran would pose to the United States and our allies, and asked for a specific assessment of Iran’s missile range capabilities.

“I want to return to the Chairman’s opening questions about Iran. A deal by definition is something where there are things on both sides, advantages and disadvantages, one side gives up something, one side gains something. Let’s assume for a moment there is a renewed JCPOA, which significantly limits Iran’s nuclear capability for the foreseeable future, for some period of years – at the same time, sanctions are relived in some way that enables them to have additional resources, which they could put into their malign activities in the region,” said Senator King. “Would you view that as a reasonable trade off? In other words, realizing you can’t have everything, do you view a nuclear Iran as more dangerous than an Iran with more money in their pockets?”

“Senator, as you know, CENTCOM is the land of less than perfect solutions. So, I’m always comfortable with a less than perfect solution. It is an overriding national policy objective of the United States for Iran to not have a nuclear weapon, to be able to possess a nuclear weapon. So, I think that’s a very important goal, and you might have to make some tradeoffs to get to that point,” replied General McKenzie. “But at the military level, my concern is first of all that they not have that nuclear weapon, but I’m also very concerned about the remarkable growth in number and efficiency of their ballistic missile force, their UAV program, their long-range drones, and their land attack cruise missile program. All of those concern me.”

“What’s our current assessment, if we can do this in an unclassified setting, of the range of Iranian missiles?” asked Senator King. “In other words, can they get to Paris? Can they get to London? Can they get to New York? Are they simply regional, a regional weapon?”

“They have over 3,000 ballistic missiles of various types. Some of which can reach Tel Aviv to give you an idea of range. None of them can reach Europe, yet, but over the last 5-7 years, Senator, they have invested heavily in their ballistic missile program,” General McKenzie concluded. “Their missiles are of significantly greater range and significantly enhanced accuracy. We saw that on the attack on Al Asad in January 2020 when their missiles hit within tens of meters of the targets they were intended to hit.”

As Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee Subcommittee on Strategic Forces – which oversees the United States’ nuclear arsenal and posture – Senator King has been an outspoken voice on the need to address the growing nuclear capacity of our adversaries. He supported the original JCPOA, saying the deal – if properly implemented – had the possibility to “increase the stability of the region,” and warned that the previous administration’s withdrawal from the JCPOA would be “potentially disastrous to U.S. interests.” Last year, he convened a hearing of top nuclear experts to talk through the strengths and weaknesses of U.S.’s current nuclear posture. During the hearing, he pressed witnesses on topics including nuclear modernization, deterrence, and the role of nuclear weapons in protecting America’s allies worldwide. Senator King recently expressed concern about the emerging threats of Russia and China’s development of “nightmare weapon” hypersonic missiles.