Rand Paul Warns That U.S. Strikes Could Lead To Faster Enrichment Of Uranium By Iran

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Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) speaks to reporters on Capitol Hill.

Transcript

00:00I told you I'd come back!

00:02Yes you did!

00:03You have your promise, we can't believe it.

00:05Senator, can you tell us, have you seen this latest intel in reporting that Iran's nuclear

00:11capabilities have only been pushed back a few months by these strikes rather than per

00:15own?

00:16I've only seen the news reports that say, or some are making the allegation that 400 kilograms

00:22of highly enriched uranium to 60% were removed in advance.

00:25I don't know the veracity of that, I've just read that in the news.

00:28I have no special knowledge and have not been briefed on this.

00:32I do think that it is an open question, and I hope they're done.

00:36I hope they are chastened by this and they want to be part of the community of nations

00:40and friendly with everybody and they don't want a nuclear program anymore.

00:43But there's also the opposite possibility that they make a sprint towards finishing off

00:49highly enriched uranium and completing a nuclear weapon.

00:52I don't think anybody knows yet.

00:54So this will either be heralded as the greatest military strike in recent history, or if they

01:00make a sprint to the nuclear weapon, people will look back in retrospect and say, oh my

01:04goodness, what happened here?

01:06I don't think it's known yet.

01:07I don't think anybody knows, and it may take a while to know.

01:10I doubt there will be any kind of inspections.

01:12I don't think there are going to be nuclear inspections.

01:14I don't expect Iran to let anybody come in and look at the facilities.

01:18They will say one thing, but it will obviously have some propaganda effect that they're trying

01:23to display, and others will say something else.

01:26But I'm not sure we're going to know for a while.

01:28I think it's going to take a while to assess things through satellite photos, but I think

01:33ultimately it's going to take a while until Iran reveals which direction they're going.

01:37Is that what you think that the briefing's been delayed, the classified briefing?

01:40I think they're because they're out of town.

01:42You know, I think Hegseth and Rubio were at NATO meetings overseas.

01:46The CDC Vaccine Advisory Panel is meeting tomorrow for the first time with its new members

01:51after Secretary Kennedy dismissed the previous ones.

01:56How do you feel about those members?

01:57I know, Chair Cassidy.

01:59I've been calling for two years for the members of these committees to reveal if they

02:04get royalties from Big Pharma.

02:07I don't know how you can sit on a vaccine committee and not inform the public whether

02:11you get money from Moderna or Pfizer, and how you could possibly vote on whether vaccines

02:16should be mandated for the whole country if you're receiving royalties.

02:20I don't know if they were, but they would refuse to answer the question.

02:23I asked Fauci that question in 2021, and he says we don't have to answer it.

02:27Imagine in your community if somebody on the city council owned the textbook company,

02:32or let's say they're on the school board, and they voted to give themselves a contract,

02:37they would go to jail.

02:38You know, we have rules in every city council that you have to reveal your conflict of interest.

02:43So I commend Secretary Kennedy for cleaning house because they wouldn't reveal if they

02:47had any conflicts.

02:48I have a bill that I'm still hoping to pass, and you would think would pass unanimously,

02:53that you have to reveal if you have royalties.

02:56If you're on one of these science committees, you have to reveal.

02:59And there are rumors of some of the people making millions of dollars.

03:02There was a revelation of NIH grants and outside money that said, I think it was 1,000 doctors,

03:101,500 scientists received over, I think it was over a billion dollars.

03:15So we're not talking about small, oh, Fauci wants to say, oh, I got $20 one time.

03:20That's not what we're talking about here.

03:21We're talking about hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

03:24So I say, good riddance.

03:26If you're not going to tell the American people if you have a conflict,

03:29let's try to get some people in there that will be honest.

03:31And help.

03:33You'll cut that out, right?

03:36And then how about the new CDC director nominee, Susan Monterey,

03:41has come before you guys .

03:42Excuse me.

03:44I've met with her.

03:47Where's my bottle of water with my hand?

03:50Just a second.

03:52We'll blame the heat.

03:57Yeah.

03:58I wish we'll come back in a second.

04:00Now I do feel like Robert Kennedy.

04:02But anyway, and I don't mean that to be mean.

04:06I like Robert Kennedy.

04:07But I have met with her, and we haven't made any final decisions about her.

04:13But from my discussions with her, she said she would be supportive of what Secretary Kennedy is doing.

04:20And if that's true, I will support her, but I'm not ready to make a decision or announcement today.

04:25Maybe one more question.

04:27I want to ask about what Speaker Johnson said this morning that the War Powers Act may not be constitutional.

04:34Peter Johnson or Mike Johnson?

04:36Speaker.

04:37Oh, Speaker Johnson.

04:38Oh, they said Peter Johnson.

04:39I guess Peter Johnson.

04:40Speaker Johnson.

04:41Yeah.

04:42Speaker Johnson.

04:43What is constitutional is what is written in the Constitution, and it says only Congress.

04:48Congress has the exclusive right, Article I, Section 8, Clause 11, to declare war.

04:54So if he wants to talk about the Constitution, he should read it.

04:57And then if he wants to discuss with us why he thinks that Congress shouldn't be involved with this,

05:01the Federalist Papers were very clear.

05:03Madison wrote that the executive branch is the branch of government most prone to war

05:08before the Constitution, with steady care, vested that power in the legislature.

05:14This was a big discussion among the Founding Fathers.

05:16They were tired of chronically being at war.

05:19They knew that Europe was always fighting each other.

05:21England was always fighting France.

05:23You had 100-year wars.

05:24You had 40-year wars.

05:25We didn't want that.

05:26We wanted to make war less easy to happen, so we gave that power to Congress.

05:30And they've been ignoring that.

05:32But I think the Speaker needs to review the Constitution, and I think there's a lot of evidence

05:38that the Founding Fathers did not want Presidents to unilaterally go to war.

05:41Thank you for that.

05:42You're the one I'm gonna want to go to war.

05:44Thank you for that.

05:46Well, thanks Lord.

05:47We're very grateful for that, so now that you're gonna get a war.

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