Colin Powell: Iran Accord Is a 'Pretty Good Deal'

Debbie Wasserman Schultz also backs deal
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 6, 2015 11:34 AM CDT
Updated Sep 6, 2015 12:03 PM CDT
Colin Powell: Iran Accord Is a 'Pretty Good Deal'
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell listens as President Obama speaks in the Oval Office, Monday, Sept. 22, 2014.   (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

The Iran nuclear deal picked up some high-profile support today, with Colin Powell coming to the defense of what he tells NBC News is "a pretty good deal." "These are remarkable changes, and so we have stopped this highway race that (the Iranians) were going down—and I think that’s very, very important." Critics, he says, are "forgetting the reality that (Iranian leaders) have been on a superhighway, for the last 10 years, to create a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program, with no speed limit." He dismissed concerns about inspectors' ability to verify Iran was sticking to the deal, saying that while "with respect to the Iranians—don’t trust, never trust, and always verify," he thinks "a very vigorous verification regime has been put into place. I say, we have a deal, let’s see how they implement the deal. If they don’t implement it, bail out. None of our options are gone."

The Iran deal also got the high sign from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who is Jewish and calls the decision the most difficult she's made in her 23 years as a public servant. "In weighing all the information that I had in front of me, I concluded that the best thing to do is to vote in support of the Iran deal and make sure that we can put Iran years away from being a threshold nuclear state and ensure that we can more closely focus on their terrorist activity," she said today, per the Hill. She acknowledges that while she's still got concerns, per Fox News, the US "will be able to more closely concentrate on stopping Iran's terrorist activity." (More Iran nuclear weapons program stories.)

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