Republican presidential candidate Sen. Lindsey Graham did not hold back in his criticism of those who run Iran’s government Tuesday, calling them Nazis.
The South Carolina senator made the comments in speech at the National Press Club in Washington on his opposition to President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.
Graham referred to a 2009 uprising in that was harshly slapped down by the Iranian regime, saying it was Obama’s first lesson on how they operate.
“At this pivotal moment, President Obama chose to remain on the sidelines,” Graham said. “The religious Nazis running Iran faced no consequences for their actions … Without the support of the world’s greatest democracy, their effort was doomed. The ayatollah and his henchmen in the Revolutionary Guard killed, jailed or terrified into silence every Iranian moderate.”
Throughout the speech, Graham walked about Obama’s “weakness” and failures in negotiating the deal with Iran, which is set to come up for debate on the Senate floor Tuesday afternoon.
“We had a President who projected weakness and clearly didn’t understand who he’s dealing with,” Graham said. “But believe me, they knew exactly who they were dealing with. They saw President Obama’s weakness and they took every possible advantage of it.”
Graham didn’t take the Nazi comparison any further in his prepared remarks, and did not make any direct references to Obama as engaging in appeasement — Great Britain’s attitude toward Adolf Hitler before World War II — that have surfaced in past Republican criticism of Obama’s deal, but he did return to the comments in the question-and-answer portion.
“The one thing you can say about (appeasement Prime Minister Neville) Chamberlain — at least Hitler lied,” Graham said while discussing Israel’s feelings on the deal. “At least he told him, ‘This is all I want.’ You can’t say that about this deal. The ink is not even dry yet, and they still chant ‘death to America, death to Israel.'”
On Tuesday, a total of 41 Democratic senators have said they support the Obama administration-backed Iran nuclear deal, potentially giving him enough lawmakers to scuttle a vote against the agreement.