Updated 12.40 | Published 12.25
Republicans and Trump friends are furious.
The agreement between the US and Iran is called “the biggest foreign policy blunder in decades”.
“Reagan is turning in his grave,” writes Louisiana Senator Bill Cassidy on X.
An agreement is signed between USA and Iran.
Exactly what is in it is not entirely clear.
But the Trump administration described in a press release on Wednesday the 14 points on peace and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz as “a great victory” for the United States.
Not everyone agrees.
From the Republican side, the criticism is sometimes very harsh.
Bill Cassidy, the soon-to-be-retired Republican senator from Louisiana, does not mince his words.
Increasingly critical
“Reagan is turning in his grave”, he writes on X and refers to the former Republican president Ronald Reagan who has been mythologized as an American leader who used tough measures against dictatorships.
“Iran’s nuclear ambitions are not stopped, and they have learned that threats to the Strait of Hormuz work, and they will undoubtedly use that in the future,” the senator also writes.
Cassidy, who used to be a Trump friend, has recently become increasingly critical of the president on the Iran issue in particular, and there are those who believe that this is why he lost the primary election.
However, he is not alone in his criticism.
“Damn the deal”
Right-wing activist and Fox News host Mark Levin, who clearly supported the US decision to go to war with Iran on February 28, has for days criticized the White House’s failure to make the entire deal public.
“I’ve been asking for days: why can’t we, the people, see the damned agreement? Not through people who have been drawn by some anonymous person. Honestly, I’ve never seen anything like it. Now if this is a brilliant peace settlement, publish the agreement”, he writes on X.
Other Republican politicians such as Ted Cruz and Lindsey Graham are more cautious in their statements.
Texas Sen. Cruz tells the conservative Daily Wire that he needs more details, but that what he’s seen so far suggests that Trump was given bad advice.
– What has come out so far shows that the president, unfortunately, is receiving very bad advice when it comes to this agreement. History has shown that it is a bad idea to give billions of dollars to theocratic lunatics who want to kill us, he says, referring to the data on an economic reconstruction fund for Iran of up to $300 billion.
Affects the entire Middle East
From Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the pro-Israel think tank Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the criticism is that the US had a unique chance to crush Iran’s regime and support the population to create a new government, something that is now being missed through the new agreement.
This is also the criticism from Israeli politicians, who point out that the threat from Iran affects the entire Middle East. Pro-Iranian Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi rebels in Yemen still have the ability to fire rockets and drones, are some of the examples put forward.
“The Islamic Republic is not a problem that can be negotiated away. The only solution is maximum support for the Iranian people. If they are given the opportunity and the help they need, they can weaken and once and for all end this terrorist regime,” writes Dubowitz on X.
