As Republican presidential candidates vow to tear up the Iran deal — at least five of them say they’ll do it on their first day in office — Republican rivals Donald Trump and Jeb Bush have been using more nuanced rhetoric.
“One thing I won’t do is just say as a candidate: ‘I’m just going to tear up the agreement on the first day.’ That sounds great, but maybe you ought to check in with your allies first,” Bush said at a campaign event in Carson City, Nevada, in July. “Maybe you ought to appoint a secretary of state, maybe a secretary of defense. You might want to have your team in place before you take an act like that.”
Bush added that he thinks it’s “important to be mature and thoughtful about this.”
And Friday morning, in an interview with MSNBC, Trump said that, while it is a “disastrous deal in so many ways,” he wouldn’t tear up — he would renegotiate it.
Trump, who will be attending a rally with Texas Sen. Ted Cruz next week against the Iran nuclear deal, said, “We have a horrible contract, but we do have a contract.”
“I love to buy bad contracts when key people go bust and I make those contracts good,” Trump said, adding that “politically, and certainly for the nomination, I would love to tell you I’m going to rip up this contract, I’m going to be the toughest guy in the world … but you know what? Life doesn’t work that way.”
Trump said that while the Iran deal was “negotiated by totally incompetent people,” the U.S. has lost the power of sanctions.
“I will make that agreement so tough, and if they break it, they will have hell to pay,” Trump said.