Former Vice President Dick Cheney says the deal on Iran’s nuclear program is likely to foment an arms race in the region that puts the prospect of the actual use of nuclear weapons the closest it’s been since World War II.
“I can’t help but just shake my head, Sean, at what we’re seeing here,” Mr. Cheney said Tuesday evening on Fox News’ “Hannity” program.
“The fact of the matter is that the situation we’ve got when Iran ends up with nuclear weapons, that is bound to lead others in the region to protect themselves and in effect to acquire their own capability,” he said.
“What Obama has done is, in effect, sanctioned the acquisition by Iran of nuclear capability,” Mr. Cheney said, with a coming arms race putting “us closer to the use, actual use of nuclear weapons than we’ve been at any time since” World War II.
President Obama said that under the deal, which will curb Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, every pathway to a nuclear weapon is cut off. But the plan has been met with significant pushback from Republicans, as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called the deal a “historic mistake.”
“I try to understand what it is Barack Obama thinks he’s achieving here, why he looks at the world in [a] different light than anybody else does, but he clearly does not understand or chooses to ignore reality,” Mr. Cheney said. “And that’s [going to] cost us dearly as a nation, and it clearly has put us in a position where our capacity to influence events in that part of the world has been dramatically undermined.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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