With New Book Out, Sen. Bennet Talks Foreign Policy, Middle East, Nuclear Capabilities
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by JNS.org
Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) talks about his latest book, “Dividing America: How Russia Hacked Social Media and Democracy,” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, on Sept. 10, 2019. Photo: Jackson Richman/JNS.
JNS.org – Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet, who is running for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, declined to say on Tuesday whether, if elected, he would re-enter the United States into the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, and keep both the US embassy in Jerusalem and the US recognition of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
In response to an inquiry from JNS during a question-and-answer following a discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, about his new book Dividing America: How Russia Hacked Social Media and Democracy, Bennet said: “I thought it was a terrible decision the president made to abandon the Iran deal. I never thought the Iran deal was perfect. Had concerns about … the limitation of time. I had concerns about its scope.”
“But when I voted for it, there was a lot that was unknown about what Iran’s compliance with the deal would look like. Those unknowns were known by the time [Donald] Trump became president,” he continued. “What was known was that the Iranians had been pushed back in terms of the breakout to a nuclear weapon by almost a year. They had gone from two to three months to a year, which is really vital. Because what is two or three months? It’s very hard to mobilize allies in that frame of time to be able to react. When you have a year, you have the time to be able do it.”
However, most of the limits on Iran’s nuclear program under the 2015 deal expire in 2026.
