Former Virginia U.S. Sen. Jim Webb joined the chorus of political leaders criticizing the Obama administration agreement with Iran.
“I think that the focus on this deal has simply been on a slowing down [of] the potential acquisition of nuclear weapons by Iran, and we’ve never been in [this] situation before where we have sort of given a tacit approval for the eventual acquisition of nuclear weapons by another country,” Webb said in an interview on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Friday.
Webb, a candidate for the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination, offered a second critique of the Iran deal in an interview on CNN on Thursday, saying the deal fails to take into account “the balance of power in the region and the signals that have been sent in the region in terms of Iran’s growing power.”
“That’s the reason I opposed the invasion of Iraq, by the way. One of the reasons was that it was going to empower Iran, and now that they have been empowered, I just think it’s the wrong time for an agreement like this,” Webb said.
In a Sunday interview on CNN, Webb was asked about growing tensions between South Korea and North Korea, and what it will take to defuse tensions with the Communist regime in North Korea.
“Well, they are a very opaque regime, the most opaque regime in Asia in terms of trying to understand what their decisional process is. And, as a result, you have to be prepared for, you know, unpredictable actions from them,” said Webb, noting the U.S. role as “the guarantor of stability in all of the Asian Rim.”
“The short-term is, we’re going to go through a crisis, and hopefully this will not spill over, because it will be bad for them, but it will be detrimental in the region. But in the long term, this is an opportunity for us to get a confidence-builder with China. We have been having a lot of problems with China. This is an area where China has some influence, and perhaps can help us resolve a situation,” Webb said.
– Story by Chris Graham
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Chris Graham
