Iran nuke deal now a campaign hot button
Candidates Trump, Cruz find common ground at D.C. rally
Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and Tea Party Republicans came together Wednesday to denounce a landmark foreign policy deal that is quickly becoming a major 2016 campaign issue: the Iran nuclear agreement.
“We are led by very, very stupid people,” Trump told several hundred Tea Party supporters gathered on the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol, calling the Iran deal “incompetently” negotiated.
Saying Iran will not honor its commitment to forgo nuclear weapons, Cruz told the crowd that the Iran deal represents “the single greatest national security threat facing America.”
Cruz, a Texas senator, noted that the deal eliminates economic sanctions on Iran, providing it billions of dollars to finance terrorist activities, and effectively making the Obama administration “the world’s largest financier of radical Islamic terrorism.”
Both Republican candidates made campaign pitches as part of their anti-agreement speeches.
Trump pledged to negotiate better deals on a variety of topics, from trade to foreign policy.
“We will have so much winning if I get elected, that you may get bored with winning,” the New York businessman said at one point.
Obama and aides said the agreement — in which the U.S. and allies reduce sanctions as Iran gives up the means to make nuclear weapons — is the best way to prevent the Tehran regime from obtaining a nuclear arsenal.
White House officials said Cruz and other speakers at the rally are using false arguments to defame the agreement. Opponents “have gone to great lengths to derail this deal,” White House spokesman Eric Schultz said. “They’ve done so by using many of the same arguments that date back to the 2002 decision to invade Iraq.” The rally came the same week Obama secured enough congressional voters to block GOP attempts to void the Iran agreement.
While Cruz and other speakers denounced Obama’s push for the deal, they also sought to put pressure on Republican congressional leaders to stop the deal from going into effect. In a Senate floor speech earlier Wednesday, Cruz said the “terrible deal” with Iran “will not stop a virulently antiAmerican and anti-Israeli regime from getting a nuclear bomb.”
Several hundred opponents of the deal gathered in 90-degree weather to hear Cruz, Trump and other Tea Party leaders denounce the Iran deal as members of the House and Senate debated it.
Earlier in the day, former secretary of State and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton endorsed the agreement.
If Iran cheats, Clinton said, as president she would “not hesitate to take military action” to block Iran from getting nuclear weapons.
All the Republicans oppose the Iran deal. The Tea Party rally, however, brought together two Republican presidential candidates in Cruz and Trump who have spoken well of each other in an otherwise fractious race.