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Rubio: Iran Deal an 'Exhibit' for Obama's Library
Wednesday, July 15, 2015 02:02 PM
By: Sandy Fitzgerald
The agreement that has been reached with Iran isn't "some sort of historic deal," Sen. Marco Rubio said Wednesday. It's an "exhibit" in President Barack Obama's presidential library.
"It's ridiculous a third-rate autocracy has now been given equality with a world power, the United States of America," the Florida Republican and presidential candidate told Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program.
"They are now a nuclear threshold country on a deal signed with the United States and other global powers," he continued. "That's why they're cheering in the streets in Tehran. You don't see any celebrations in America; you don't see any celebrations in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, because they know this is a one-sided deal."
Rubio said he believes the Republican response will be very strong when it comes to disapproving the deal, but the question is whether enough Democrats can be attracted to also "see this deal for what it is," as it makes Iran "into a world power, a threshold nuclear power, a country that can now, in about less than five years, begin to receive arms imports once again."
In addition, he said the deal means "one of the leading sponsors of terrorism in the world" will have "billions of dollars available to them to use for things like the sponsorship of terrorism."
In addition, the deal does not reveal a great deal of detail about the inspections process for Iran's facilities, Rubio commented.
"Are our inspectors going to be allowed to go anywhere at any time to look at what Iran is doing?" he said. "My hope is that we're going to be able to convince enough of our Democratic colleagues to join us on this issue, [as] without them we can't stop it."
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic nomination, has come out in support of the deal, and Rubio said he hopes that does not mean that Democratic lawmakers will automatically follow her lead.
"This is a major issue of importance," said Rubio. "This is not some domestic issue that we can just come back next year and repeal. This is an issue that has long-standing consequences. If Iran becomes a nuclear weapons power, as I anticipate they will over the next 10 years."
He also warned that anyone who supports the deal will "have to answer to history for that, including many of my Democratic colleagues, and most certainly this president. My hope is that we can convince Democrats that they don't want to be a part of something like that and we can get their votes to stop this."
Further, Rubio decried the idea that the deal was reached to help appease China and Russia, as "I don't think the foreign policy of the United States should be determined by what Russia and China [want]."
He also commented that Iran is "building long-range missiles," which are not addressed in the agreement.
"Why do you build intercontinental ballistic missiles?" he said. "There is only one reason you build them, and that's to put a nuclear warhead [on them], and you know where they're going to be aimed. They're going to be aimed at the United States because they know if they can create that capacity we can't do anything to them, because they now have a nuclear deterrent on us."
