December 12, 2014
Despite speculation in recent weeks that Hillary Clinton might split with President Obama over his Iran policies, she has instead endorsed everything Obama is doing on Iran.
As for the nuclear talks, “I think it is a very important effort to continue to pursue, and to try to see if we can reach an agreement that is in line with our requirements,” Clinton said last Friday night.
She called for a tough approach in the talks, saying she is “strongly of the view that no deal is better than a bad deal.” Those are exactly the words that Obama has used several times.
“A deal that verifiably closes all of Iran’s pathways to a nuclear weapon—and the key there is verifiably—including covert efforts, that is what is at the center of this negotiation,” Clinton said. Obama has said the same thing several times.
“One might say, remarkably, our partners have not jumped ship. They have stayed in the negotiation.” The Obama Administration has said it will veto any new sanctions while the talks continue in part because new sanctions might encourage allies to jump ship.
Her comments came during an hour-long question-and-answer session at the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC.
The nuclear talks could remain a hot topic if, as widely expected, Clinton seeks the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016. There had been widespread speculation that Clinton would stake out a position on Iran more confrontational than Obama has pursued in an effort to innoculate herself from debates over Iran policy with Republicans, all of whom are likely to be more hardline than Obama.
Clinton also said she wishes she had “spoken out more” during the so-called Green Revolution after the 2009 elections in Iran. Previously, she said she did not speak out because Iranian opposition figures contacted by the State Department almost uniformly asked that she remain silent, fearing that words of support from the United States would tar Iranian opposition figures in the eyes of the Iranian people.
