U.S. lawmakers appearing on Sunday talk shows split sharply over a potential deal to end the Iran war. Republicans mostly backed the publicly reported contours of an agreement being negotiated by President Donald Trump, while Democrats dismissed it as accomplishing little.
Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Maryland Democrat and member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the reported outlines sounded like little more than 'the pre-war status quo' with Iran. 'I think this was a blunder,' Van Hollen said on Fox News Sunday.
Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, praised Trump's approach. 'I think on the whole what the administration has been able to do for the first time in 47 years is force the remnants of this regime into a real negotiation,' Lawler said on CBS' Face the Nation.
Senator Cory Booker, a New Jersey Democrat, said Trump was being 'played as a fool' in negotiations. 'He’s got us in a situation that’s worse than it was before,' Booker told CNN's State of the Union.
Republican Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee said any deal will have 'strict' terms to ensure Iran has no path to a nuclear weapon. 'President Trump has used military force to basically annihilate the economic, technological, and military capacity of the Iranian regime,' Hagerty told Fox News.
Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina suggested on CNN that the reported details represent a shift in the administration’s stance. 'We were told about 11 weeks ago that they had obliterated Iran’s defenses. Now we’re talking about accepting the nuclear material remaining in Iran. How does that make sense?'
