Republicans continue to rip President Donald Trump’s latest Iran deal to shreds, according to a new report from The Hill, with at least one lawmaker saying that “Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave” in reaction to it.
This week, details began to emerge about the latest peace deal signed by officials in the U.S. and Iran, aimed at reopening the Strait of Hormuz and issuing a 60-day ceasefire to allow for further negotiations to take place. Elsewhere, the deal will also, among other things, end the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports and create a $300 billion fund to help the nation rebuild.
While the deal also calls for Iran to swear off ever developing a nuclear weapon, it does not call for an end to its nuclear program altogether. This, and the economic benefits given to Iran, have prompted considerable backlash against the deal from Republicans in Washington, with some, like Sen. Bill Cassidy, tearing the bill apart in no uncertain terms and saying that the terms are not worth what the U.S. had to sacrifice to get here.
“Ronald Reagan is rolling over in his grave,” Cassidy wrote in a social media post, calling the Iran war and this ensuing deal. the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
He continued: “Iran’s nuclear ambitions were not curbed, and they have learned that threatening the Strait of Hormuz works and will undoubtedly leverage it in the future. Now, Iran gets to build brand-new infrastructure under this deal. Now, 13 Americans are dead, families have paid billions at the pump, sanctions will be lifted, and the bombing has stopped.”
Sen. Thom Tillis, an outspoken Trump critic within the GOP, also made a similar point about the losses incurred during the war.
“You got to do the balance of accounts: A hundred billion roughly, maybe more, spent today, 13 dead, 365 wounded, injured, our partners in the Middle East bombed, they’ve had casualties,” Tillis laid out. “There’s got to be a lot of return on that… We set out by saying we were going to drive down to zero their nuclear capability. Now we’re equivocating on that… There’s a lot of work to be done to convince me that we’re on the right path.”
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, typically known to be a loyal MAGA follower, also spoke out against the deal for giving money to “theocratic lunatics,” but stopped short of directly blaming Trump for the bad terms.
“History teaches that giving billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to murder us is not a good idea,” Cruz said. “I think the president is receiving some very poor advice on this deal.”