On Thursday’s broadcast of MS NOW’s “The Last Word,” Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA) argued that Iran “feels the president is desperate for a deal. You hear the president talking about a deal, basically, that sounds a lot like the deal that Barack Obama struck that he so ridiculed.”
Schiff said, “Lawrence, he’s really demonstrated that he’s a weak and incompetent president and even weaker in the course of this war. He started out, as you just pointed out, with this declaration that Iran was going to have to unconditionally surrender. Even now, Hegseth claims that we hold all the cards, and yet, the president orders ships to escort other vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, and we get fired upon, and the president says, no worries, that doesn’t upset the ceasefire, just pretend it didn’t happen. And imagine this, Lawrence, I find this to be the most striking part of it: Saudi Arabia, for all that this administration has done, and in every way catered to Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia tells the administration that it may not use its airspace to escort these ships through the Strait of Hormuz. This is why that escort operation came to a rapid halt. The weakness of the administration, the weakness of this president, that the Saudis would feel empowered to say no to the use of our vessels, the risk to our sailors to escort ships, including those carrying Saudi oil, it’s breathtaking.”
He continued, “But Iran now feels empowered. It feels like the clock is ticking on its side. It feels the president is desperate for a deal. You hear the president talking about a deal, basically, that sounds a lot like the deal that Barack Obama struck that he so ridiculed. And he wishes to distinguish it somehow by saying, no, no, this deal will be different because this deal, in this deal, Iran promises not to develop a bomb. Well, I guess that’s really something, we can now rely on Iran’s word. So, we are just seeing, as you said, the President having trapped himself, growing weaker and weaker, and, sadly, he has also trapped the country, and we’re paying for it.”
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