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WASHINGTON -- To presidential hopeful Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), the nuclear accord reached between Iran, the U.S. and five world powers is simply a precursor to war in the region. But the senator says his preferred alternative is the interim agreement reached in November 2013 -- an agreement he once opposed.
The final nuclear deal, announced on Tuesday, builds off the 2013 Joint Plan Of Action by dismantling the bulk of Iran's nuclear infrastructure in exchange for more expansive sanctions relief. “It’s akin to declaring war on Sunni Arabs and Israel,” is how Graham explained the deal to Bloomberg View on Tuesday morning.
The next day, Graham vowed that as president, he would kill the agreement.
The preferable alternative, he says, would have been for the U.S. to walk away from the negotiating table and maintain the status quo under the JPOA.
“I would keep the interim deal in place,” he said on CNN’s "State of the Union" on Monday. “The interim deal has worked better than I thought it would, so hats off to John Kerry,” he continued. Multiple reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency have found that Iran has complied its obligations under the interim agreement.
But despite Graham’s seemingly fond memories of JPOA, he wasn’t always a fan of the accord. While the South Carolina senator now appears to be taking the position that anything is better than the recently negotiated deal, he once thought JPOA was an atrocity.
On Nov. 25, 2013, the day after the plan was announced, Graham lamented that Iran had been offered even limited relief from sanctions when “we had the chance to deliver a body blow” by hitting the country with further economic punishment.
“The sanctions actually worked, but this interim deal gives the Iranians $7 billion in cash and leaves in place one of the most sophisticated enrichment programs around,” Graham said at the time. He added that the U.S. should have been tougher on Iran in terms of its stockpile of highly enriched uranium and the centrifuges used to enrich the material.
Arms control advocates argue that the final agreement is sufficient to address those concerns: Under the terms of the deal, Iran will have no highly enriched uranium and will be required to eliminate 97 percent of its low-enriched uranium.
The country will also have to reduce its number of centrifuges from 20,000 to 6,100, only 5,060 of which will be operational.
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