During the 2016 election season, the Iran nuclear deal has been a major focus for Republicans. Ted Cruz and Donald Trump both criticized the deal, with Trump saying that he had “never seen something so incompetently negotiated.”
Colin Powell, the first Secretary of State under George W. Bush and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest rank possible in the United States military, disagrees with Cruz, Trump, and nearly every other critic — Powell is actually knowledgeable of the nuances of diplomacy.
In an interview given in September on MSNBC, Powell described the Iran deal as “pretty good” and explained why it worked in the United States’ favor.
“One of the great concerns that the opposition has that we are leaving open a ‘lane’ for the Iranians to go back to creating a nuclear weapon in 10-15 years are forgetting the reality that they have been on a superhighway for the last ten years to create a nuclear weapon or nuclear weapons program with no speed limit.”
Powell went on to praise the deal for several stipulations that will help the United States monitor the actions of Iran, such as limiting their supplies and supervising their activity.
“In the last ten years they’ve gone from 136 centrifuges up to something like 19,000 centrifuges. This agreement will take them down to 5,000 cent all of this will be under IAEA supervision and I think this is a good outcome. They had stockpiled something in the neighborhood of 12,000 kilograms of uranium. This deal will bring it down to 300 kilograms. It’s a remarkable reduction. I’m amazed that they would do this this but they have done it. These are remarkable changes. We have stopped this highway race that they were going down and I think this is very, very important.”
[Occupy Democrats] Featured image via screen grab
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