Angus King: War ‘May Provoke’ Iranian Nuke Scientists to Race to Bomb

On Thursday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Morning Edition,” Sen. Angus King (I-ME) said that “if there are people in Iran, they’re scientists and engineers that have been working on this problem for years, the question is, how do you, ultimately, prevent them from racing toward a bomb, which this whole war that we’ve been in may provoke them to do?”

King said, [relevant remarks begin around 4:10] “Well, the question is, how are they going to ensure that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon? The nuclear material that’s there — there are two pieces of this: The nuclear material that’s there, that we know of, is buried under I don’t know how many feet of rubble. Getting that out is either — there [are] only two ways: One is diplomacy, one is agreement with the Iranian government to give up that material. The other is troops. You can’t do it from