There are few things that Donald Trump is known to dislike more than being compared, in any way, to his predecessor Barack Obama. And when it comes to Iran, Trump really doesn’t like his diplomatic efforts being compared to the agreement that Obama and other Western leaders agreed to with Iran back in 2015.
Trump made that clear in a late-night Truth Social post over the weekend.
It started with Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) appeared on Fox News on Sunday to talk about the possibility of a diplomatic way forward following the U.S. attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. After calling for the “full picture” of what was achieved in the strikes, Coons pointed out Trump’s posture on negotiations is not that different from one Obama pursued a decade ago.
“I’ll just note that President Trump by press accounts is now moving toward negotiation and offering Iran a deal that looks somewhat similar to the Iran deal that was offered by Obama: tens of billions of dollars of incentives and reduced sanctions in exchange for abandoning their nuclear program,” Coons said on the show.
Trump, who exited the United States from that agreement once he became president, did not react kindly to that implication.
“Tell phony Democrat Senator Chris Coons that I am not offering Iran ANYTHING, unlike Obama, who paid them $Billions under the stupid “road to a Nuclear Weapon JCPOA (which would now be expired!), nor am I even talking to them since we totally OBLITERATED their Nuclear Facilities,” Trump said on Truth Social.
As pointed out by The Daily Beast, Coons had actually praised Trump during much of the Sunday Fox interview, including having positive things to say about Trump’s appearance at the NATO summit in The Netherlands last week.
Whether the Iranian nuclear sites really were “obliterated,” as Trump has insisted for the last week, remains ambiguous. The Washington Post reported over the weekend that the U.S. “obtained intercepted communication between senior Iranian officials discussing this month’s U.S. military strikes on Iran’s nuclear program and remarking that the attack was less devastating than they had expected.” The Iranian government officials heard on the call were also “speculating as to why the strikes directed by President Donald Trump were not as destructive and extensive as they had anticipated.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told the Post that “it’s shameful that The Washington Post is helping people commit felonies by publishing out-of-context leaks.”
Photo courtesy of Political Tribune media library.
