President Donald Trump, by pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, is continuing his "assault" on former President Barack Obama's legacy, and that "seems to be his number one foreign policy priority," Sen. Chris Murphy said Wednesday.
"I don't see any pros to this," the Connecticut Democrat, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told MSNBC's "Morning Joe," adding that Trump's foreign policy "is dictated" by aiming at "anything that has Obama's fingerprints on it, not what's good for the nation."
Murphy said the theory seems to be that sanctions relief can be unwound and and put back together in a package to bring the Iranians to the table "and convince them to sign a better deal," but "that is pure fantasy."
"What's really going to happen in the short term is the Iranians are going to try to cut a side deal with the Europeans that further splinters us from our European partners," said Murphy.
"Eventually that deal probably falls apart, the Iranians restart their nuclear program, and then relations are so frayed between the United States and all the countries that we put the original sanctions regime in place."
He said he also thinks the odds of war starting between Israel and Iran, and the United States being drawn in, is "much higher" than it was before Tuesday.
"What we know is that the Israeli defense forces sent out a notice yesterday talking about concerning movements by Iranian forces, Iranian proxy forces inside Syria, ratcheting up the rhetoric about a potential conflict," said Murphy.
"The Iranians are going to be in no mood to try to defuse that conflict. Now that they've been pushed out of this agreement. And the tensions between us and Tehran are going to go nowhere but up, setting up even greater prospect for conflict in the region."
Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave an extensive presentation about Iran's nuclear activity, but Murphy said that did not really yield any new information.
"We knew that Iran had a secret nuclear program," said Murphy. "That was fully known by Republicans and Democrats in Congress. For those of us that supported the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action), it was because we wanted inspectors inside Iran to make sure they couldn't restart that nuclear program."
Murphy said that what he may be most worried about is that inspectors will be kicked out of Iran.
"Trump's advisers have consistently told him Iran has not violated this agreement," said Murphy. "Iran has lived up to its end of the bargain. Now is it a perfect deal? No, absolutely not. Many of us would have liked for it to go longer.
"Many of us would have liked for inspectors to get into military sites, but the alternative, which is no inspectors, looking at anything Iran is doing, and Iran's ability to restart the nuclear programs today is totally unfeasible."
Trump's actions, added Murphy, "means that they are going to engage in even worse activity in the region, and they're going to be able to potentially secretly restart that [secret nuclear] program again."
Murphy said members of Congress let Trump know they were willing to work with Trump to add to the JCPOA, but "the president rejected our overtures," and he doubts that lawmakers will be able to work with him on those measures.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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