President Barack Obama’s deal with Iran over its nuclear program took center stage in the race to replace U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., on Wednesday.
Lt. Gov. Carlos Lopez-Cantera, running for the Republican nomination, sent a letter to U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., urging him to continue to stand against the deal. Politico Florida first reported about Lopez-Cantera’s letter to McConnell.
“I believe if the Senate fails to stop this measure, they will be party to one of the most disastrous and consequential foreign policy mistakes of the last 100 years, and will be held responsible for the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran in the judgment of history,” Lopez-Cantera wrote McConnell.
Lopez-Cantera urged McConnell to use “any procedural tool available to you to ensure the Senate can block this measure or at a minimum can at least vote to disapprove the deal.”
The lieutenant governor also praised Rubio for standing against the agreement and jabbed U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., for supporting it.
“Sen. Marco Rubio is right to oppose the dangerous Iran deal, and Sen. Bill Nelson is on the wrong side of an issue that is critically important to the safety of America and our allies,” Lopez-Cantera insisted on Wednesday.
Lopez-Cantera wasn’t the only Republican Senate hopeful focused on the Iran deal on Wednesday.
Republican presidential hopefuls Donald Trump and U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, were the headliners at the “Stop the Iran Deal Rally” hosted by Tea Party Patriots on Wednesday outside of the U.S. Capitol but U.S. Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., who is running for the Senate, also spoke at the event.
DeSantis ripped into the agreement on social media as well, slamming it on Facebook.
“When I served in Iraq in 2007, Iranian-backed groups were killing our soldiers with Iranian made bombs,” DeSantis posted on Facebook. “The Iran deal not only allows Iran a path to a nuclear bomb, it actually lifts sanctions against those who perpetuated those attacks. That is a gratuitous insult to the lives and memories of those who served in Iraq in defense of our nation. This deal cannot stand.”
The other two leading Republican candidates in the Senate race -- U.S. Rep. David Jolly, R-Fla., and businessman and veteran Todd Wilcox -- are also opponents of the deal with Iran.
Also on Wednesday, one of the main Democratic candidates fell in line behind Obama’s deal with Iran. Quoting the Yiddish proverb “a shlekhter sholem iz beser vi a guter krig," (“a bad peace is better than a good war”) U.S. Rep. Alan Grayson, D-Fla., announced he was backing the deal. U.S. Rep. Patrick Murphy, D-Fla., Grayson’s main rival for the Democratic nomination, is also supporting the agreement.
“I will be voting in favor of the Iran nuclear agreement,” Grayson emailed supporters on Wednesday night. “The reasons are many and varied, but the reason that weighs most heavily in my mind is the proverbial worst-case scenario: Scene 1: Congress rejects the deal. International sanctions fall apart immediately. Scene 2: Without disabling any nuclear facilities, Iran receives the $55 billion in accounts receivable for its oil sales. Scene 3: Iran ramps up oil production, adding another $20 billion in oil revenue per year. Scene 4: The anti-Iran rhetoric of GOP presidential candidates intensifies; several of them promise to bomb Iran before sundown on Inauguration Day, 2017. Scene 5: Iran enriches uranium beyond 20 percent , and starts to build nuclear weapons, trying to finish just in time to celebrate the ‘Birth of the Prophet’ (Dec. 28 this year, if you’re a Shi’ite).
“Then there is a fork in the road,” Grayson added. “Scene 6A: Iran builds several nuclear weapons, with the threat that they will be used in combat, or shared with allies like Hezbollah. A nuclear arms race breaks out in the Middle East. Scene 6B: The United States goes to war against Iran, to try to destroy its nuclear facilities. Iran and its allies counterattack against U.S. interests, specifically including U.S. forces and ‘assets’ in the region. Scene 6C: Israel goes to war against Iran. The outcome is uncertain, and the possibility looms of perpetual war between two countries separated by two other countries, and a distance of 1000 miles.
“There are those who posit that if the agreement is rejected, Iran will refrain from building nuclear weapons,” Grayson continued. “There are those who posit that if the agreement is rejected, other countries will adhere to international sanctions. There are those who posit that if the deal is rejected Iran will return to the negotiating table. I don’t see a lot of support for those hypotheses. They might be right but, more importantly, they might be wrong.
“I wish that these negotiations had been used as a vehicle to bring peace to the region,” Grayson concluded. “But it’s too late for that now. The immediate question is a simple one: Is it more dangerous to have an agreement, or to have no agreement? On the evidence I see, it’s more dangerous to have no agreement. So I will be voting in favor of the Iran nuclear agreement.”
Attorney Pam Keith is also running for the Democratic nomination. She weighed in on the agreement last week. “It may not be a good thing, but it's way better than the alternative,” Keith insisted.
Reach Kevin Derby at kderby@sunshinestatenews.com or follow him on Twitter: @KevinDerbySSN
