Senator Graham: Rand Paul is More Misunderstanding of the Middle East Than Obama

Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and GOP presidential hopeful, weighed in on the Middle East, the Iran nuclear deal, and Turkey helping with ISIL but bombing the Kurds.

Senator Graham told Brian that the Iran deal is terrible and that the next President could do much better if we left sanctions on the table. He also believes that we can get a better deal with Iran if the threat of force was on the table but no one in Iran believes President Obama would use force to stop a nuclear breakout. The bet the administration is making is that Iran is going to change, but he believes that looking back at their history you see that there is no chance that they will change.

In responding to the swipe Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) took at him Senator Graham responded: There was one senator who rejected my resolution that passed 90-1. And the resolution said the following: We cannot allow Iran to get a nuclear weapon and try to contain them because it won’t work. Once they get a nuke they will share it with a terrorist group and it will come here or one day use it and start a nuclear arms race. If they ever get it you can’t contain them. 90 senators agreed with me, there was only one senator who disapproved with my resolution—Rand Paul. So here is what I would say about Senator Rand Paul. He is more misunderstanding of the Mideast than Obama and that is saying a lot. He agreed with President Obama about pulling all of our troops out of Iraq. I objected. I think I was right. He did not support helping the free Syrian Army 3 years ago when it mattered. This is a religious war. We were attacked on 9/11/01 we didn’t have one soldier in Afghanistan. We didn’t have any foreign aid. We didn’t have an embassy. So in Rand’s world, if you leave them alone they will leave you alone. In my world, we’ve got to put radical Islam in a box. Whatever it takes. As long as it takes. A school house in a remote region educating a young poor girl will do more damage to radical Islam than any bomb. I am for leading from the front, empowering people over there. We’ve got to have partnerships that include assistance. Rand Paul had a budget that cut off all aid off, even to Israel, so if you don’t want to be at war all the time, you need to help people. You need to build up others.