Romney slams Obama on Iran but doesn’t join GOP letter

Former Republican presidential candidate and Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney slammed President Obama’s negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program in an op-ed published Friday.

“Are there any fans of President Obama’s foreign policy record — other than our nation’s adversaries, that is?” he asked in the article, published in USA Today.

{mosads}”But the president could silence critics like me and even qualify for a Profile in Courage Award by doing the right thing on Iran: Walk away from a flimsy nuclear agreement.”

He accused the president, as many Republicans have, of seeking a weak deal with Iran and said that bargains with hostile regimes have a history of falling through. Romney said agreements with North Korea from the 1990s had failed to stop them from further developing their nuclear program.

“A soft nuclear agreement with a rogue state? Fool us twice, shame on us,” he said.

Romney said the U.S. should put additional sanctions on Iran and demand that they dismantle their nuclear program entirely. If they failed to do so, he said, the president should be ready to authorize military action.

The White House says that the Iranians will never agree to shut down their nuclear program indefinitely, and that the best chance negotiators have of stopping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is to get them to agree to at least a decade-long freeze.

Negotiators are approaching an end-of-March deadline to reach a deal on the framework of an agreement.

Romney’s op-ed comes at the end of a week that began with 47 Republican senators, led by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), sending an open letter to Tehran’s leaders warning that Obama can’t speak for future administrations or congresses. The letter, which Romney did not allude to, warned that a bad nuclear deal could be voided by more than just Obama.

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal (R) later added his signature to the missive.

The negotiations have been met with skepticism for much of the last six months, including from Romney. In November, he said he was “stunned” by reports that the president had written directly to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to try and aide the negotiating process.

Romney said earlier this year he will not run for president again in 2016.