The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee called President Obama’s Iran deal “disappointing” on CNN today.
“It’s disappointing to me that Iran is still going to be allowed to enrich while they’re talking. I would have thought that should be a prerequisite to any kind of talks. We’re not asking them to dismantle any of their centrifuges. So that’s disappointing,” Representative Eliot Engel told host Candy Crowley.
Republican representative Ed Royce, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee, also issued grave warnings about the deal’s implications. “Unless we understand that they are capable of cheating and have, in place, the ability to really ratchet up, we’re going to find ourselves exactly where we found ourselves with North Korea,” he said.
Engel called for the U.S. to use the talks going forward to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program altogether. “I think we have to use these next six months to make sure that Iran dismantles its program — and that they have no right to enrichment. They keep saying, even as we speak, that they have a right to enrichment. That troubles me. They don’t,” he said.