Trump faces fresh bipartisan criticism on Iran deal as Vance hails peace talks | US-Israel war on Iran
While the US president made new threats and Vice President J.D. Vance welcomed progress in the first round of direct peace talks in Switzerland, US political figures from the left and right voiced new objections to Donald Trump’s interim deal with Iran on Sunday.
Republican Senator John Cornyn of Texas, who recently lost his first battle for re-election. sent Here’s a line on “Iran’s ability to withstand sanctions so far reveals a harsh reality for Washington: Economic pressure has largely failed to intimidate rogue regimes as they seek to find more ways to circumvent US restrictions,” the statement said.
This was his remarks two days earlier, in which he said he hoped the US would “get the job done” and eliminate Iran’s enemy nuclear capability, before reaching a deal that included the release of restricted Iranian funds, reinforcing his warning that “they will now use that money to replace and start enriching their ballistic missile assets.” [uranium] again and this will be an ongoing danger.
On Sunday morning, senior Democrat Susan Rice, Joe Biden’s domestic policy aide and former US ambassador to the United Nations and national security adviser under Barack Obama, responded to Trump’s latest statement on the memorandum of understanding (MOU) between the US and Iran, calling it “flimsy” and “horrible” because “so many concessions had already been made”, adding that it was a “jaw-dropping, horrific surrender” from Trump.
Rice told ABC News This Week that the concessions made to Iran in the Memorandum of Understanding signed by Trump in Paris last Wednesday “normally would not and should not be made, at least not until a full-scale agreement is reached on their nuclear program, but until agreement is reached on the terms that have been negotiated.”
Rice pointed to a provision in the document that, in line with Cornyn’s words, shows that Iran “can now sell all of its oil and all of its oil products on the market without impediment and use that money to rebuild itself” before any deal on the nuclear issue.
The bipartisan criticism came as Trump threatened to resume military strikes against Iran, including the forcible US seizure of control of the Strait of Hormuz shipping channel, if it did not cooperate with Iran and rein in its proxy Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Rice said the previous deal with Iran that Obama negotiated with Iran when he was president and later canceled by Trump in his first term did not lift sanctions on Iran until a full agreement was reached on a deal, not just a Memorandum of Understanding before a full deal.
Rice also said that Obama’s condition for Iran’s access to frozen assets was that they could only be spent for humanitarian purposes, and that there were no restrictions under the Trump Memorandum.
The New York Post tabloid newspaper, owned by Rupert Murdoch, who supports Trump, withering editorial uses the striking headline: “Trump’s Iran deal is worse than Obama’s, with the Strait of Hormuz held hostage.”
Rice’s comments came after Sen. Cory Booker, a Democrat from New Jersey, declined an invitation to give Trump credit for ending the war.
“This is literally like an arsonist starting a fire and gaining credibility by escaping the burning building. This president has led this country into disaster. We have surrendered our power,” Booker told NBC’s Meet the Press. “We surrendered to the enemy, and now they are mocking us.”
Booker said that “Iran has received literally billions of dollars in full benefits” under the memorandum of understanding, calling it a “disgraceful capitulation.”
As the first round of face-to-face U.S.-Iran talks at Lake Lucerne in Switzerland wrapped up late Sunday morning, Vance said negotiators had “already made great progress in the last few hours, and I expect we will make further progress in the coming hours.”
Regarding Israel’s ongoing military operations in Lebanon, Vance said: “These things are always a little messy… but I actually feel very good about where we are in Lebanon. There’s still a little more wood to cut, but we’ll keep working.”
Last week, Texas Republican senator Ted Cruz said Trump was getting bad advice on Iran.
“History shows that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to kill us is an extremely bad idea,” he said.
Meanwhile, US energy secretary Chris Wright told ABC’s This Week on Sunday that the Lucerne talks “will reveal what Iran’s goals are and what they think the trade-offs are that they may have to make.”
“We’ve never been in this situation before,” he said. “The actions of the US military, both in destroying Iran’s military capabilities and in forcing passage through the Strait of Hormuz without any dialogue, have put the Iranians in a very different situation. They do not have the influence they always had in previous talks,” he said.
Wright declined to predict when U.S. consumers would see a return to pre-war gas prices in the United States. “They will continue to go downhill,” he said. “The flow of oil and natural gas in the Strait has already returned to normal and negotiations with the Iranians will continue that way regardless.”
