Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas) on Sunday said that he would advise President Donald Trump against pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal. Thornberry, the…
Rep. Mac Thornberry (R., Texas) on Sunday said that he would advise President Donald Trump against pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.
Thornberry, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” to discuss his position on the Iran nuclear deal and what he would advise Trump to do in the next week.
“Should President Trump pull out of the Iran nuclear deal next Saturday– by next Saturday, even if the Europeans decide to stay in it and continue to do business with Tehran?” Host Chris Wallace asked.
“I would counsel against it. I was opposed to the Iran deal. I thought it was a bad deal. Iran got most of the benefit up front with relief of sanctions and a plane load of cash that President Obama sent over there, so we lost a lot of our leverage,” Thornberry said. “I’m not necessarily opposed to sticking with this deal forever, but we need to have a clear idea about next steps if we are going to pull out and especially given the larger context of Iran’s aggressive activity in the Middle East.”
Later in the interview, Wallace asked Thornberry whether he thought that the Iran deal was “fixable” and if so, should Trump stay in it if he can get some ad-ons with European allies.
“I think these ad-ons would be very important. Is it possible? It’s hard to say until you try, so maybe the best thing is for the president to delay a bit more his deadline of this month and put the French and the British up to the test about whether it is possible to get this other sort of agreement,” Thornberry said.
He went on to agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s statement earlier this week on Iranians and how they tried to cheat on the Iran nuclear deal.
“One of the other things they are doing is they’re shipping in arms to Hezbollah right on Israel’s doorstep and the temperature is being turned up there. The possibility of conflict is probably greater than it’s been in quite some time and it will be very important for the international community to be united to prevent that conflict,” Thornberry said.
