On Monday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Weeknight,” Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) stated that the negotiations with Iran prior to the strikes on it “were a cover story.” And “negotiations were going well.”
Merkley said, “[W]e were in the middle of a negotiation with Iran, and, all the time knowing that, apparently, Trump knew that [we were] plotting to attack and the negotiations were a cover story. What does that say about the United States and our diplomacy around the world, our standing in the world? We saw something very similar in the first attack on Iran that was done with Israel.”
He continued, “The thing that really, really disturbs me a lot is the havoc, being, with no clear objective what we’re trying to accomplish. And now, Rubio telling us, we’re doing this because Israel was going to attack, and, therefore, there might have been retaliation that might have affected some of our U.S. bases. So, we had to attack first. Are you kidding? We are now — we’re the little pet puppy with Netanyahu walking us around on a leash and saying, hey, I’m going to attack Iran, so, you all better just do what you need to do, and we’re like, oh, okay, I guess we better act? As if we don’t have any leverage with Israel to say, hell no, you’re not going to attack Iran. We’re not going to engage in negotiations that are fake negotiations. And, by the way, of course, negotiations were going well. Have we been reduced to just a little puppet of Netanyahu?”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett