Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind., and candidate for the Democratic nomination for president in 2020, criticized US President Donald Trump on Tuesday for withdrawing from the 2015 Iran deal in May 2018, saying that it was “close to a true ‘art of the deal,’ ” a reference to one of the president’s books.
“Preventing the spread of nuclear weapons should remain a core tenet of our global leadership,” said Buttigieg, 37, in a speech focused on foreign policy and national security at the University of Indiana in Bloomington. “For this reason, I will rejoin our international partners and recommit the US to the Iran nuclear deal.”
“Whatever its imperfections, this was perhaps as close to a true ‘art of the deal’ as it gets,” he said. “This agreement was concluded not to do Iran a favor, but because it is in our national security interest.”
Beside Buttigieg, other candidates who said they would re-enter the United States into the Iran deal include Sens. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro, author and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson, and Wayne Messam, mayor of Miramar.
In May2018, US President Donald Trump announced that the United States would withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, and re-impose sanctions against Iran that had been lifted under the agreement.
ZZ/PR