http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/8/james-mattis-pick-emboldens-iran-hawks-eager-to-pr/
Emboldened
Iran hawks eager to press Tehran on nuclear violations under Donald Trump
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“I
don’t know, frankly, what Donald Trump wants to do [about Iran], but I do know
the people he has selected so far for major positions I’ve been very pleased to
see,” said Sen. John McCain, Arizona Republican. (Associated Press) more >
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By
David R. Sands - The Washington Times - Thursday, December 8, 2016
Hawks
critical of the Obama administration’s outreach to Iran over the past eight
years were in a distinctly upbeat mood as they took over an ornate Senate
caucus room Thursday to promote their cause. The incoming Trump administration,
many said, understands their case and the threat posed by the regime in Tehran
far better than President Obama ever did.
Senate
Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain and Democratic Sen. Robert
Menendez, a longtime member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, were
among the lawmakers saying Mr. Trump and the team he is assembling will clearly
be more skeptical of Iran and ready to call out any violations of the
multinational nuclear deal Mr. Obama helped negotiate in 2015.
“There
is every reason to believe and be hopeful that the president-elect will take a
new set of eyes and a new approach to this theocracy. I’m very hopeful that
will happen,” former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge, the first secretary of
homeland security, told the briefing on the policy options on Iran held in the
Russell Senate Office Building.
Mr.
McCain said he was heartened by Mr. Trump’s choice of James N. Mattis to head
the Defense Department, saying the retired Marine general was deeply familiar
with the threat posed by Tehran to the U.S. and its regional allies. Gen.
Mattis has criticized the Iran nuclear deal as “imperfect” and said in an April
speech that “the Iranian regime, in my mind, is the single most enduring threat
to stability and peace in the Middle East.”
“I
don’t know, frankly, what Donald Trump wants to do [about Iran], but I do know
the people he has selected so far for major positions I’ve been very pleased to
see,” the Arizona Republican said.
The
Capitol Hill event itself, put together by the Organization of Iranian American
Communities,* marked another step in the remarkable evolution for one of the
major sponsors of the event, the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of
Iran and the NCRI’s largest component, the Mujahedeen-e Khalq (People’s
Mujahedeen of Iran), or MEK.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/dec/8/james-mattis-pick-emboldens-iran-hawks-eager-to-pr/
