Members of Connecticut’s congressional delegation were quick Tuesday to condemn President Trump’s announcement that he would withdraw the United States from the Iran nuclear accord “as a horrible, one-sided deal.”
U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, said pulling out of the agreement made it more likely the United States would face nuclear crises in both Iran and North Korea.
Trump’s action “will make it even harder to convince Kim Jong-un to give up his nuclear weapons because we just showed that we can’t be trusted to live up to our end of the bargain,” Murphy said.
Both Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal said Trump’s action would isolate the U.S. from its allies in Europe and elsewhere.
French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted after the announcement, “France, Germany, and the UK regret the U.S. decision to leave the [agreement]. The nuclear non-proliferation regime is at stake.” The allies reportedly had failed to persuade Trump that his concerns about the deal could be addressed without ending it.
“Tearing up the deal is not a strategy,” Blumenthal said. “It is certainly not the strategy urgently needed to stop the Iranian regime’s malign agenda. The President has squandered a historic opportunity to strengthen the agreement with enhanced limits and sanctions – trashing instead of tightening it – and eroding our position in stopping a nuclear-armed North Korea as well.”
U.S. Rep. Jim Himes, D-4thDistrict, also criticized the withdrawal in a series of tweets.
“We are now closer to a world in which centrifuges are spinning again in Iran and people are explaining to me why a military attack is the only way to stop an Iranian weapon of mass destruction,” Himes tweeted.
U.S. Rep. Joe Courtney, D-2nd District, said Trump had acted “recklessly.”
“This isolates our nation at the very moment we should be rallying international support to denuclearize North Korea,” Courtney said. “I will support every option possible in Congress to reconstruct and strengthen the progress we have already made toward keeping nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands. Unfortunately, the President has seriously undermined that effort today.”
U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty, D-5th District, called Iran a “dangerous state sponsor of terrorism” that has repeatedly threatened America and Israel. But, she said, “It is better to have an imperfect, yet a verifiable agreement in place that allows us to confirm Iran’s compliance with measures that prevent the development of a nuclear weapon than to have no agreement at all.”
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-3rd District, said Trump had “recklessly gambled with our national security by deciding to withdraw despite verified evidence that Iran has been in compliance. His reckless action risks yet another nuclear crisis, and only pushes the United States and Iran further down the dangerous path of militarization.”