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Sen. Coats: Iran nuclear deal "fatally flawed"

Posted at 5:45 PM, Sep 09, 2015
and last updated 2015-09-09 17:45:34-04

U.S. Senator Dan Coats reaffirmed his opposition Tuesday to what he called the "fatally flawed" nuclear deal with Iran proposed by President Barack Obama.

FULL TEXT | The Iran Deal

In an interview with RTV6 reporter Katie Heinz, Coats said the U.S. "literally conceded just about every goal we had going into this" to reach the deal, which was announced in July following negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 countries: China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany.

Watch Katie's full interview with Sen. Coats below:

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MORE | Iran and 6 world powers agree to historic nuclear deal | The Iran Deal, Explained | The Iran deal gets even more complicated after AP report

Coats' statement comes one day after Governor Mike Pence and 14 other governors penned a letter to the White House urging the President to reject the deal, and stating their intention to keep state sanctions on Iran even if the nuclear deal is approved.

MORE | Gov. Pence signs letter opposing Iran deal

"Interestingly enough, and distressingly enough, just last evening we found out that the President claims he has the votes to filibuster this issue and not even allow Congress to take a vote on this," Coats said. "The Iranian Parliament will be voting on their side of the agreement, and the American people's representatives in Congress don't have a vote? So this is a new wrinkle to this, and the President is crowing over, oh, I've got the votes and therefore why do we even need to go through with this? I'm not giving up on this fight. I think it has enormous consequences for the future and needs to be debated so the American people know where their representative and their senator stands."

With Democrats claiming enough votes to stop a resolution of disapproval on the bill, it wasn't clear Wednesday whether Republicans still intended to carry out a vote on the issue.