Senator Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) said that the Iran deal “ultimately legitimizes Iran as a threshold nuclear state” and “doesn’t end Iran’s nuclear program, it preserves it” on Tuesday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “The Rundown with Jose Diaz-Balart.”

Menendez said that he has to see the whole deal because “details make an enormous amount of consequence in terms of how they’re written,” He added, “But let’s realize what the deal is and is not, even in its framework. The deal ultimately legitimizes Iran as a threshold nuclear state. The deal doesn’t end Iran’s nuclear program, it preserves it. From what I’ve read so far, the deal doesn’t provide for the anytime, anyplace inspections that we wanted of suspected sites. The deal has a commission that ultimately will decide whether a violation can be pursued, and the clock on that potential violation, especially if it’s access to any — to sites that we suspect, when there is a dispute with Iran, would take, when you add up all the different elements, 24 days, nearly a month. So, those are just elements that have come out that are worrisome, but we’ll have to look at the totality of the agreement and see as Tom Friedman of the New York Times said about a week ago, is this the best bad deal that can be achieved?”

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