Former Secretary of State Colin Powell suggested on Meet the Press this morning that President Obama’s Iran deal is “pretty good.” Powell told Chuck Todd that he has looked carefully at the arguments for and against. “My judgment after balancing those two sets of information,” he said, “is that it’s a pretty good deal. He dismissed the idea that the deal leaves open a means by which Iran will eventually get a bomb, proposing that the Obama administration’s plan in fact reduces the likelihood of that happening. “The great concern from the opposition is that we’re leaving open a lane for Iran to create a nuclear weapon in 10 to 15 years,” he noted. But “the reality is that they have been on a super highway for the last 10 years to create a nuclear weapon — with no speed limit.”
Powell also argued that the critics should wait and see how it works out. ”I say, we have a deal, let’s see how they implement the deal. If they don’t implement it, bail out. None of our options are gone.” Indeed, he seemed to see the pact as a fait accompli: ”Even if we were to kill the deal — which is not going to happen,” he submitted, “it’s going to take effect anyway, because all of these other countries that were in it with us are going to move forward.”