Obama Defends His 2015 Iran Deal With Jab at Trump’s War: ‘We Didn’t Have to Kill a Whole Bunch of People’

Former President Barack Obama mounted a forceful defense of his 2015 Iran nuclear deal with a pointed jab at President Donald Trump’s war with the regime, arguing his administration “pulled it off without firing a missile.”

The Late Show host Stephen Colbert shared the new clip from an interview filmed in April at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

In the never-before-seen moment, the former president was pressed by Colbert on whether he ever considered “military action” as a “tool” in his negotiations with Iran.

“Oh, it was definitely considered,” Obama admitted, continuing: “My basic theory was that Iran couldn’t become a nuclear state. That the regime itself was murderous, oftentimes towards its own people, engaged in state-sponsored terrorism, was a threat to the United States and allies of ours. So the idea that they would have nuclear weapons would be extraordinarily dangerous.”

“It would also trigger a nuclear arms race in what is a powder keg,” he said, adding that he also believed that the regime was “not entirely irrational” and military action would be a “last resort instead of the first.”

Praising what is known as the “Iran nuclear deal” – formally the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – he explained that it was “internationally agreed upon” that “mechanisms” be put in place to “enforce” and “verify” Iran’s enriched uranium stockpile.

“And we pulled it off without firing a missile. We got 97% of their enriched uranium out,” he said. “They were able to maintain a modest civilian nuclear program for energy.”

In a pointed jab at Trump’s strikes and the subsequent shuttering of the key trade route through the Strait of Hormuz, Obama insisted that the deal was “working.”

“Not only did I think it was working, even Israeli intelligence thought it was working, even our intelligence services thought it was working,” he said. “So, there’s no dispute that it worked. And we didn’t have to kill a whole bunch of people or shut down the Strait of Hormuz.”

Colbert countered that the current president did not agree, and noting he’d branded his predecessor’s deal as “the worst of all time” and had withdrawn from the deal in 2018.

“Yeah, because I did it,” Obama quipped. “Which is fine. That seems to be a pattern.”

He continued then to argue that “no serious independent folks would say that it didn’t work with respect to the nuclear program.”

Obama then caveated that the goal of the deal was not regime change or to degrade the Iranian military.

He continued: “Part of this balance between military force and diplomacy is based on, ‘What are your objectives? What are your goals?’ And is it important for the United States, as the most powerful nation on earth, to show certain restraint to say ‘All right, we’d rather take care of this really big problem, recognize we’re not going to solve all problems without going to war.’”

“Rather than pretend or delude ourselves into thinking that just by going to war we’re going to fix all problems where usually we end up causing more,” he concluded.

Watch above via CBS.

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