Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Tuesday that if he is elected president, he would kill any deal President Barack Obama reached with Iran which permitted Tehran to maintain the capability and infrastructure to enrich uranium,
the Washington Examiner reported.
Rubio, who is considering a run for president next year, told syndicated talk-show host Hugh Hewitt that because it allows Iran to enrich uranium, the Obama administration's nuclear deal with Iran "is totally unacceptable" and would "abandon almost a decade of sanctions" based on the premise that the regime would not be permitted to enrich uranium.
He noted that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt, and Jordan have made very clear that they will demand the right to do whatever Iran is permitted under the deal currently being negotiated by the Obama administration.
Given that reality, Rubio predicted that instead of creating a more stable world, the agreement currently being negotiated with Tehran is going to result in a "region awash with nuclear infrastructure."
Rubio told Hewitt that Obama is about to cut a deal with Iran similar to the one that the Clinton administration, with the assistance of former President Jimmy Carter, reached with North Korea in the 1990s. Pyongyang trashed the agreement en route to developing and testing multiple atomic weapons,
according to The Washington Free Beacon.
Some experts believe North Korea, which is currently thought to
have a stockpile of 10 to 16 nuclear weapons, could have as many as 100 of them by 2020.
Rubio said it is also important to remember what is
not being covered by the current negotiations: Iran's intercontinental ballistic missile capability.
It is possible "that before the end of this decade, Iran could possess a long-range rocket that could reach the … continental U.S." But that danger is "not even being covered by these negotiations," the Florida Republican emphasized.
Because Obama seeks to bypass Congress in negotiating an Iran deal, the agreement "won't survive this president," Rubio told Hewitt. "It doesn't have the force of law."
The Examiner observed that there is ample precedent for a U.S. president to reverse an executive agreement reached by an earlier administration. Upon taking office in 2009, President Obama cancelled a deal to place
missile defense installations in the Czech Republic and Poland as part of a change in U.S. strategy toward Vladimir Putin's Russia.
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