GOP Candidates: Nuke Deal a Foreign Policy Disaster
Current Republican presidential hopefuls agree on one thing: the nuclear deal with Iran is bad.
During the Christians United for Israel Summit (CUFI) this week, Gov. Jeb Bush, Sen. Ted Cruz, Gov. Mike Huckabee, and Gov. George Pataki said that this deal is not only a threat to Israel but to the United States as well.
"Today right now, there is no issue more dominant, as Prime Minister Netanyahu puts it, an 'existential threat' to Israel than a nuclear Iran. I believe this negotiation poses a tremendous threat both to Israel and the U.S.," Cruz said.
Click play to watch the updated report from CBN News' Erick Stakelbeck.
The permanent members of the U.N. Security Council reached an agreement with Iran as thousands of Christians gathered in Washington, D.C., for the summit.
"All the time they were negotiating, they (the Iranians) were chanting 'death to America' and were voting in their parliament to not allow military inspections," Huckabee said.
"There is no way to have a legitimate framework with people who are continued sponsors of state terrorism, whether its Hamas or Hezbollah or their own government's form of terrorism," he said.
Huckabee warned that people should not be fooled by the Iranian regime.
"These are people who have killed, kidnapped Americans. They're not basis whatsoever for us to suddenly think that they are going to behave nicely because we sat down and spent more time trying to be nice to them than we've spent sitting down and trying to be nice to Israel," he said.
Bush called for a deeper debate, but pointed to a past that doesn't bode well for the future.
," he said.
Pataki inicated that it is not too late to avoid a bad deal. Congress could reject it but it would take some work.
"Congress has the ability to reject it and our first fight has got to be to try to convince Congress to have the bipartisan majority necessary to say, 'No this is going to just propel the number one sponsor of state terror to a nuclear path,'" he said. "That is unacceptable under any circumstances."
The candidates all remained unsettled about the deal's ultimate outcome.
"To me this is one of the most remarkable and inexplicable foreign policy disasters I have seen in my lifetime," Huckabee said.
