Obama Will Never Strike a Satisfactory Iran Nuclear Talks Deal

Sen. Lindsey Graham said Wednesday that President Barack Obama will never achieve a satisfactory nuclear deal with Iran and that the best outcome for the U.S. would be for the negotiations with the Middle Eastern power to drag out until the next president is in office.

In an interview with Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, the South Carolina Republican said every 2016 Republican presidential candidate save Sen. Rand Paul – and even leading Democrat Hillary Clinton too – would strike a better deal with Iran than would Mr. Obama.

A longshot presidential candidate himself – he is in 15th place in the RealClearPolitics average of national polls – Mr. Graham lamented that the leading GOP presidential contenders have offered only vague proposals for how they would tackle intractable problems in Syria and Iraq. He called on former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Marco Rubio to clarify their positions on how to address Syria and Iraq.

Here is a partial transcript of some of his remarks, edited for brevity.

On the Nov. 2013 interim agreement between Iran and six world powers, which provided Iran with limited sanctions relief in exchange for rolling back parts of its nuclear program

“The interim agreement has performed better than I thought it would. I think it’s a good place to stay until Obama leaves office… Nobody really believes what he says anymore. So I think it would be impossible for him to deliver a good deal because he’s a flawed negotiator in the eyes of the Iranians. Everybody would get a better deal in the field on our side, [Hillary Clinton] would get a better deal. Everybody except Rand Paul, because he is even to the left of Obama. I can’t imagine him being the negotiator, in the eyes of the Iranians, he’s even weaker than Obama.”

On the way forward if negotiations, which have already breached a deadline, collapse

“What I would do if they walked away is introduce an authorization to use military force to let the Iranians know that we’re confused about Syria, we’re confused about Iraq, we’re confused about Libya as a Congress, but we’re not confused about you and your nuclear ambitions. An authorization to use force to stop a nuclear breakout by Iran would pass overwhelmingly. That would be the first order of business if they walk away. It would be reinforcing the statement the president made that all options are on the table. I think it would be very important to let the Iranians know that Congress is behind the president if he chooses to use force to stop a breakout.”

On how Congress would receive an Obama-brokered deal

“I think we’ll beat it. I think we’ll beat a bad deal.

“Every member of Congress will have to judge, am I going to own a nuclear arms race by voting for this deal… If you can get public opinion against a deal, if you can get the Arabs saying we’re going to want a weapon of our own or we’re going to go down the same road you paved for the Iranians and you get [pro-Israel lobbying group] AIPAC drawing a line in the sand, I think we can beat it. Because who the hell wants to own a nuclear arms race? You own the deal in perpetuity. It’s contest between a legacy item for Obama and the future of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton… ask her this question: Where is she on this deal?”

On how he differs from leading Republican presidential candidates on Iran and Middle East policy

“I really don’t know exactly where everybody’s at. [Wisconsin Gov.] Scott Walker, I don’t know where he’s at. He said he’s not going to be for an open-ended commitment when it comes to sending troops. Well, I am. My policy toward radical Islam is pretty simple: Whatever it takes, as long as it takes until we defeat them. So when he says he’s not for an open-ended commitment I don’t know what that means. It means he’s hesitant. I’m not.

“When it comes to Syria, Jeb and Marco and all these guys need to step up. What are you going to do? Are you going to impose a no-fly zone? I would do it the first day on the job. Assad’s going to go standing up or sitting down. Because you can’t fix Syria and the Mid-East until you fix Syria. So I would put on the table American troops would go in with Arab armies. The bulk of the force would be the Turks, the Egyptians, the Saudis and others in the region. You’re talking about 30 to 40,000, at least, [Islamic State] guys in Syria, it’s going to take a big army to pull them up. We’d probably need around 10,000 of our guys and 70 or 80,000 of their guys to go in and have a decisive edge over [Islamic State].”