Carly Fiorina: U.S. broke every rule in Iran negotiations
Republican presidential candidate and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina criticized the freshly inked nuclear deal with Iran, saying in a "CBS This Morning" interview, "There is a lot of reason to be suspicious here."
"It would be different if Iran was a good actor and had negotiated in good faith all this time but they haven't and we've caved many times," Fiorina said. "I've never negotiated an Iran nuclear deal, but I've negotiated a lot of high-stakes deals, and there are a couple of rules and every rule has been broken. If you want a good deal, you've got to walk away sometimes. We never did."
She suggested the U.S. could not trust the verification components of the deal because they do not allow access to Iran's military sites and because Iran has sought to break agreements in the past. Under the agreement, inspectors can ask for access to the military sites, but, as the Associated Press reported, "access at will to any site would not necessarily be granted."
"I think unfortunately as we know Iran has already cheated on sanctions and inspections regimes so there's no real guarantee right now that the're going to play fair," she said.
Nor, she said, does the approval of the international community mean the deal is good. Fiorina argued that Russia and China were actually negotiating to help Iran (even though they were part of the group of six world powers that included the U.S.) because they have an interest in opening Iran's economy. And the European Union, she said, "has negotiated, frankly, a number of weak deals."
Fiorina also talked about the 2016 presidential campaign, where she has been struggling to attract much attention from voters and remains near the bottom of most polls.
Still, she insists that she she has a shot because "the American people are tired of professional politicians."
"The American people think we now have a professional political class of both parties that is more concerned with its protection of its power, privilege and position than on solving problems. I agree with them, that's why I'm running," she said.
Fiorina has been more focused on attacking Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton than members of her own party. She said that Clinton in particular is the "personification of the professional political class" and has policies that will hurt the nation.
Weighing in on the speech Clinton gave Monday where she laid out her vision for the economy and suggested ways she would try to boost the middle class.
But Fiorina said, "Every prescription she laid out is a recipe for more crony capitalism."
"Big government begets big business. We see it in banking, we see it in healthcare, we see it in the student loan business which the federal government nationalized," she said. "Meanwhile the real engine of economic growth and job creation and innovation in this country - small businesses, family businesses, community-based businesses - are getting crushed. We are now for the first time in U.S. history destroying more businesses than we're creating. So the objective is right, but her policies make the current situation worse."