Obama says partisanship over Iran deal has gone too far

Obama says partisanship over Iran deal has gone too far

“But when you start getting to the point where you are actively communicating that the United States government and our secretary of state is somehow spinning presentations in a negotiation with a foreign power, particularly one you say is your enemy, that’s a problem,” he said.

Clearly irked by aggressive pushback from the strengthened Republican majority in Congress, Obama also singled out Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for criticism, saying the Kentucky Republican had been “telling the world” not to have confidence that the U.S. can meet its own climate change goals.

McConnell has been urging U.S. states not to comply with Obama’s power plant rules, and arguing that the U.S. could never meet Obama’s target even if those rules do survive.

Obama also renewed his complaints about the 47 Republican senators who sent a letter to Iran’s leaders saying that any deal the Iranians made with the U.S. wouldn’t necessarily hold up after Obama leaves office.

Of all of it, Obama said: “That’s not how we’re supposed to run foreign policy regardless of who’s president or secretary of state.”

Obama said he’s still “absolutely positive” that the framework agreement is the best way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And he added that if the final negotiations don’t produce a tough enough agreement, the U.S. can back away from it.

The president added that instead of working to make the nuclear deal better, GOP critics seemed out to sink it.

“I don’t understand why it is that everybody’s working so hard to anticipate failure,” he said.

McCain last week said that comments by Iran’s supreme leader had suggested that Iran and the Obama administration were on different pages. McCain called the supreme leader’s suggestion that Iran wouldn’t allow unlimited inspections “a major setback,” adding that it was the supreme leader, not President Hassan Rouhani or Iran’s foreign minister, who really calls the shots in Iran.

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via NorthEast Calling http://ift.tt/1CIRK7s