Mr. Lieberman spoke about on the sanctions imposed on Iran which were “not about Iran’s nuclear weapons program” but rather, human rights. He then proceeded to bring it up THREE times during the press conference.1
The headlines light up from Lieberman’s suggestions:
“US Ready to Strike Iran” (2010) & “Bomb Iran If It Doesn’t Stop” (2007)
“We hope this threatens the abusers in Iran and we hope this legislation says to the protestors, your struggle is difficult but as has been the case for those who have fought tyrannies throughout history, that ultimately the cause of freedom and justice will prevail.” – February 11, 2010 joining John McCain on an Iran Human Rights Bill
On “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer June 10, 2007
“I think we’ve got to be prepared to take aggressive military action against the Iranians to stop them from killing Americans in Iraq…and to me, that would include a strike into…over the border into Iran, where we have good evidence that they have a base at which they are training these people coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers.”
“I think you could probably do a lot of it from the air, but they can’t believe that they have immunity for training and equipping people to come in and kill Americans.”
If the U.S. does not act against Iran, he added, “they’ll take that as a sign of weakness on our part and we will pay for it in Iraq and throughout the region and ultimately right here at home.”
In September of 2007, John Kyl co-sponsored an amendment with Lieberman to basically declare the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a global terrorist group. The initial intent was to identify Iran’s influence in Iraq to ratchet up the military response.
He told the Jerusalem Post: (aim of air strikes in Iran would be) “to delay [the nuclear program] to deter it hoping that you set the program off course so that by the time they catch up back to where they were there’s been a change in government. That’s the limited objective that I would see” – April 18, 2006
In December of that year he paraphrased he was opposed to a sit in direct talks with Iran because it was like “your local fire department asking a couple of arsonists to help put out the fire. These people are flaming the fire. They are extremists.”
In 2004 Joe Lieberman help for the Committee on Present Danger (CPD) claiming the aim of the group was “to form a bipartisan citizens’ army, which is ready to fight a war of ideas against our Islamist terrorist enemies, and to send a clear signal that their strategy to deceive, demoralize, and divide America will not succeed.”
Then all the way back to 2003, in an interview on FOX News:
I think it would be in the interest of the world, and most particularly of the Iranian people, to have a regime change in Iran.
I’ve actually been saying that for quite a while, that we’ve got to begin to look at Iran the way we looked at the Soviet Union for a long time, which is the people are on our side. Every poll says that. Every time they get a chance to vote, the Iranians vote for reform.
There is a small group of extremists at the top of the Iranian government, very much like the small group of communists at the top of the Soviet Union, who will not deal with us.
Of course, the Iranians even are more detached from us, and more extreme than the Soviets were. And I think what — we want to have a policy that looks for the Lech Walesas and Vaclav Havels of — and in some senses the Gorbachevs — of Iran, and encourage them in every way we can.
For nearly a decade Joe Lieberman has been beating the drum for us to blow up Iran.
“We can tell them we want them to stop that, but if there’s any hope of the Iranians living according to the international rule of law and stopping, for instance, their nuclear weapons development, we can’t just talk to them,” Lieberman said. “If they don’t play by the rules, we’ve got to use our force, and to me that would include taking military action to stop them from doing what they’re doing.” – On “Face the Nation” with Bob Schieffer June 10, 2007
While we are naturally focused on Iraq, a larger war is emerging. On one side are extremists and terrorists led and sponsored by Iran, on the other moderates and democrats supported by the United States… This bloodshed, moreover, is not the inevitable product of ancient hatreds. It is the predictable consequence of a failure to ensure basic security and, equally important, of a conscious strategy by al-Qaeda and Iran, which have systematically aimed to undermine Iraq’s fragile political center… On this point, let there be no doubt: If Iraq descends into full-scale civil war, it will be a tremendous battlefield victory for al-Qaeda and Iran… One moderate Palestinian leader told me that a premature U.S. exit from Iraq would be a victory for Iran and the groups it is supporting in the region. – December 29, 2006 Washington Post
And you thought that Joe Biden was gaffe prone?
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