By David Cruz
Correspondent
If there is to be a deal to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, it’ll come over the objections of New Jersey’s senior senator. After an event in Paterson today, Bob Menendez made it clear what he thought of the president’s foreign policy philosophy.
“I think the president very often has the hope that engaging countries will change their actions and the problem with that is that hope is not a national security strategy,” he said.
And that was one of the kinder observations the senator made about the president, with whom his relationship has grown increasingly strained. Menendez said the Iranians should not be trusted and that any deal that allows them to have access to any nuclear materials and lifts economic and weapons sanctions will be disastrous for the U.S.
“That’s one of the things that makes me anxious,” he continued. “Iran keeps its nuclear infrastructure into the future. Iran gets anywhere from $100 to $150 billion of relief and the ability to sell oil on the market again. Well, what’s Iran gonna do with that? Yes, they will use some of it for their domestic needs but, even at a time of great economic need, Iran is using part of its money for what?”
The long-running talks, held together by a series of renewed interim agreements, appeared close to a final resolution today until it hit a snag reportedly on Iran’s insistence on relief from UN weapons sanctions. Yet another example, suggests Menendez, of an administration that seems singularly focused on getting an agreement, any agreement, to add to its foreign policy scrapbook.
“I just think that it is a view that the president has that is aspirational, that you engage, for example, the Castros and that, after 50 years of repression, they’re somehow going to change,” added the senator. “I just think that that’s not reality, but it is his foreign policy views in many parts of the world.”
Cuba, Iran, Iraq. That’s just the short list of disagreements that has driven a wedge between two Democrats who once seemed to share an ideology but find themselves now at political cross purposes.