Leon Panetta Quotes

Iran's continued pursuit of nuclear weapons, support for international terrorist organizations, and abhorrent human rights practices pose one of the greatest threats to global security.

We can not allow a terrorist state to become a nuclear power.

Iran with a nuclear weapon or with fissile material that can be given to Hezbollah or Hamas or others has the potential of not just destabilizing the Middle East. But it could be brought here.

The Iranian regime gives financial support to terrorist organizations all over the world, denies the Holocaust, and calls for the wiping the state of Israel from the map, while developing long-range missiles and trying to obtain nuclear weapon.

Our resolution urges all Latin American and Caribbean countries to designate al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Hamas, and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad as terrorist organizations.

The standards of the international community manifest firmness. Iran has no need for long-range missiles or to collaborate with terrorist organizations all over the world.

Israel has many hopes, and faces extreme dangers. The most prominent danger is Iran, which is making every effort to acquire nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, and establishing an enormous terror network together with Syria in Lebanon.

My red line is Iran may not have a nuclear weapon. It is inappropriate for them to have the capacity to terrorize the world. Iran with a nuclear weapon or with fissile material that can be given to Hezbollah or Hamas or others has the potential of not just destabilizing the Middle East.

As a result of the billions of dollars flowing into Iran after the JCPOA, the Iranian regime is able to increase its support to terrorist group groups like Hezbollah.

The nuclear deal with Iran's radical clerics and their military junta is the most dangerous and potentially deadly action that the Obama administration has yet taken.

Obviously, we don't want Iran to have nuclear weapons and I don't know if they're developing them, but if they're not developing them, they're crazy.

The world's state sponsor of terrorism is now on path, sanctioned by the United States, to create nuclear weapons. We are going to make it possible for them.

Iran - the world's leading sponsor of terrorism - is close to having nuclear weapons.

There's Hezbollah, there's Hamas, there is a whole range of terrorist targets out there related to Palestine and to Israel that we ought to be trying to deal with. And there's a great deal of targets in the Philippines, Indonesia. You name it, there are a number of places where there are targets that we ought to be trying to deal with.

Anyone who says that Iran will commit suicide with its nuclear power is a moron and has no business in discussion.

There is a Western world. There is America. There is Great Britain and Germany and France and Russia and China and other nations. I doubt that there is one country amongst those I mentioned which has a desire to see Iran, with its fundamentalist, Islamic, extremist government, possessing nuclear weapons.

We believe, as the President has indicated, that this combination of a rogue state that possesses weapons of mass destruction and has known ties to terrorist organizations, is a grave threat to the people of the United States and to other countries around the world.

We see today that there is a growing understanding in the international community that the extremist regime in Tehran is not just Israel's problem, but rather an issue that the entire international community must grapple with.

I don't believe Iran is a suicide state.

Iran stands behind a substantial number of terrorist actions against us, together with Hizballah and the Islamic Jihad. It pretends to care for the Palestinians.

The aggressive, unprovoked acts of violence against Israel by Hezbollah and Hamas are revealing. It is clear they don't want peace, but rather seek the ultimate destruction of Israel.

The President of Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and the West and has even denied the holocaust took place. Iran and its terrorist arm Hezbollah are responsible for the current conflicts between Israel and Lebanon.

The threat from Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction - chemical, biological, potentially nuclear weapons capability - that threat is real.

So I think we should stay focused on the real problem in the Middle East. It's not Israel. It's these dictatorships that are developing nuclear weapons with the specific goal of wiping Israel away.

My greatest fear is the Iranians acquire a nuclear weapon and give it to a terrorist organization. And there is a real threat of them doing that.