WASHINGTON — Debate on the Iran nuclear deal morphed into full-blown political spectacle Wednesday as Donald Trump and Ted Cruz held a rally to denounce it, Hillary Clinton gave a speech to praise it and congressional Republicans angrily turned on one another as they grasped for a last-ditch play to stop it.
The maneuvering and speechifying did little to change the reality: Barring unlikely success of an eleventh-hour gambit by the House, the international accord aimed at curbing Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for relief from economic sanctions will move ahead.
But that seemed only to inflame GOP opponents as Congress convened for its first full day back after a five-week summer recess that hardened partisan divisions around the accord. Republicans turned up the rhetoric against the deal at a rally outside the Capitol, while inside, House conservatives searched for a legislative way to undermine it.
“Never ever, ever in my life have I seen a deal so incompetently negotiated as our deal with Iran,” Trump told the crowd. “We are led by very, very stupid people. We cannot let it continue.”
Across town, Clinton praised the accord. “Diplomacy is not the pursuit of perfection. It is the balancing of risk,” she said at the Brookings Institution.
