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Former national security adviser Susan Rice railed against President Trump’s memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Iran, ripping the 14-point agreement as “flimsy.”
“It’s egregious, Jon,” Rice told ABC News’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday, “because so many concessions were granted up front in this flimsy two-page memorandum of understanding that wouldn’t normally and shouldn’t have been granted until after there was not only a fully comprehensive deal to at least deal with their nuclear program.”
Rice, who served under former Presidents Clinton and Obama, bashed the MOU earlier this week — calling it “a jaw-dropping, horrific surrender document complete with hundreds of billions in reparations.”
The MOU, which was finalized Wednesday, aims to end the months-long conflict in Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It also terminates oil sanctions on Tehran and outlines a 60-day timeline for technical talks about the country’s nuclear program.
Democrats and even some Republicans have expressed frustration with the agreement, particularly the $300 billion reconstruction fund.
“I oppose this war because it was a stupid war, and it was obvious that when you wage a stupid war — that every prior president had the wisdom to avoid — that you were going to end up with either bad outcomes or worse outcomes,” Rice said Sunday on “This Week.”
Rice took particular issue with the administration’s handle on the Strait of Hormuz, the critical waterway through which about a quarter of the world’s oil travels.
“Iran has now figured out they can use the Strait of Hormuz to hold us and the global economy hostage anytime they want,” she said. “And they’ve been playing that game over the last 48 hours.”
Iran signaled that it would close the strait amid renewed fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon over the weekend. The Trump administration, however, has maintained that ships are beginning to be able to travel through the passageway.
“I think it’s that returning flows back towards normal without any cooperation at all from Iran, that’s the leverage President Trump used to get the Iranians to come to the table and realize they’re going to lose all the cards in their hand,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told Karl in a separate interview Sunday.
Yet, Rice asserted that although the MOU ends the war, it leaves the U.S. in a worse spot.
“This is a very bad outcome,” she said. “I obviously think we shouldn’t have been in this war in the first place, because it was obvious for decades that the only way to resolve this problem is through diplomacy.”
“And now we’re back to diplomacy with a far weaker hand,” she continued.
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