Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker expressed deep disappointment in President Obama’s remarks Wednesday in which he compared Republicans who have concerns about the Iran deal to Iranian hardliners who chant “Death to America.”
Top Republicans and Democrats in the Senate who have serious questions about the Iran deal, he said, are “being compared to hardliners in Iran because we have concerns — concerns that we are trying to have answered.”
He also accused Obama of “trying to shut down debate” by saying that those who have questions — “legitimate questions” — are “somehow unpatriotic, are somehow compared to hardliners in Iran.”
“So I’m very disappointed,” he added in opening remarks at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing Thursday morning.
Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel, as well as Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, the former ranking Democrat before an FBI ethics investigation forced him to step down, also have serious questions about the deal, he said.
Corker also recalled how the president “just a few months ago, was talking about “what a thoughtful, principled person I was” when he pushed a bill that would put off a vote to increase sanctions on Iran until after the administration and other world powers’ negotiations had ended.
The Tennessee Republican also suggested that the administration may be refusing to obtain and share documents outlining the International Atomic Energy Agency’s role in implementing the nuclear agreement because the so-called side deals would not “stand the test of late-night comedy.”
A report in Bloomberg View Thursday revealed that the U.S. intelligence community has informed Congress about evidence that Iran was sanitizing its suspected nuclear military site at Parchin, in broad daylight, just days after agreeing to the nuclear deal.
