Rubio: ‘Iran is going to exploit any loophole’

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said Friday that a bad deal with Iran on its nuclear program “almost guarantees war,” and Tehran would exploit even a good one any way it could.

“Iran is going to exploit any loophole in a deal that it can find,” Rubio said at National Review’s NRI Ideas Summit in Washington, D.C.

{mosads}“They don’t have any moral objections to lying,” he said. “They’ll accept any benefits of a deal, but they don’t want any of its restrictions.”

Rubio, a 2016 GOP presidential candidate, also predicted that a weak deal would increase the risk of conflict in the Middle East.

“I would argue a bad deal almost guarantees war,” he said.

“Israel is not going to abide by any deal that puts its existence in danger,” Rubio added. “Neither are the Sunni Islam countries.”

Rubio argued this justifies his proposed Senate amendment that would require Iran to recognize Israel’s inherent sovereignty in any final agreement. The stakes were too high, he said, for the U.S. to waiver in support of its longtime ally.

“You don’t do a deal with Iran unless you acknowledge Israel has a right to exist,” Rubio said.

“The criticism of that is, that a lot of countries in the Middle East don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist,” he said. “Not all of them are trying to get a nuclear weapon.”

A second essential ingredient, he said, was verifying that the U.S. and Iran agreed on all the details of the final pact. The two nations have differed over which version of a tentative pact announced on April 2 is the correct one.

“Unfortunately, the president’s fact sheet and Iran’s fact sheet do not match up,” Rubio said.