How long before he's being viciously attacked on Fox and right wing blogs? The Iranian nuclear deal is pretty well a done deal, but that won't stop the right from doing their best to undermine and dismantle it. Say what you will about Colin Powell and his responsibility for the Iraq invasion, he's right about this: Colin Powell: Deal With Iran Is A 'Pretty Good Deal':
Former Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday that President Obama's nuclear deal with Iran is a "pretty good deal."
"I think it is a good deal. I studied very carefully the outline of the deal and what's in that deal. And I've also carefully looked at the opposition to the deal," Powell told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet The Press." "And my judgement after balancing those two sets of information is that it's a pretty good deal."
Many of the Republican presidential candidates have voiced their opposition to the deal.
"I say, we have a deal, let's see how they implement the deal. If they don't implement it, bail out. None of our options are gone," Powell told Todd.
Here's more from NBC:
Critics concerned that the deal will expedite Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Powell added, are "forgetting the reality that [Iranian leaders] have been on a superhighway, for the last 10 years, to create a nuclear weapon or a nuclear weapons program, with no speed limit."
He said the reduction in centrifuges, Iran's uranium stockpile and their agreement to shut down their plutonium reactor were all "remarkable."
"These are remarkable changes, and so we have stopped this highway race that they were going down — and I think that's very, very important," Powell said.
He also pushed back on skeptics who have expressed worries about the ability of independent inspectors to verify that Iran is following the agreement. Powell said that, "with respect to the Iranians — don't trust, never trust, and always verify."
"And I think a very vigorous verification regime has been put into place," he said.
"I say, we have a deal, let's see how they implement the deal. If they don't implement it, bail out. None of our options are gone," Powell added. [...]
And Powell noted that, even if the deal did fail in Congress, dozens of other nations who were party to the negotiations have already agreed to it, making it impossible for the U.S. to sit out.
"Even if we were to kill the deal — which is not going to happen — it's going to take effect anyway, because all of these other countries that were in it with us are going to move forward," he said.
"They're all going to be moving forward — we're going to be sitting on the sidelines."
