Presidential hopeful Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) slammed President Obama for allowing the United Nations Security Council to vote on the Iran nuclear agreement.
“President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran is a dangerous and destabilizing failure, and it is telling that he is seeking Russia and China’s seal of approval of his deal before administration officials have even briefed Congress,” Rubio said in a statement. “The stakes are too far high for America’s security to be outsourced to the United Nations.”
{mosads}Rubio’s comments came after the U.N. Security Council unanimously endorsed the deal in a 15-0 vote.
The Iran vote at the U.N. also took place on the same day that the United States and Cuba reopened their embassies as part of the restoration of diplomatic ties.
Rubio, a vocal critical of the president’s Cuba policy, linked the two events, suggesting that July 20, 2015, will be remembered as “Obama’s capitulation Monday.”
“Monday’s events at the U.N., Washington and Havana leave no doubt that we have entered the most dangerous phase of the Obama presidency in which the president is flat-out abandoning America’s vital national security interests to cozy up to the world’s most reprehensible regimes,” he added.
“July 20 will be a powerfully symbolic day for the Obama-Clinton foreign policy legacy, which will be remembered as a dark time in American history when the mullahs in Iran and the thugs in Havana celebrated at America’s expense.”
The Florida senator is part of a growing number of Republicans, as well as key Democrats, who pressed the administration to block action at the U.N. until after Congress had 60 days to review the Iran agreement.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), another 2016 presidential candidate, said allowing the U.N. to vote before Congress “is an affront to the American people and further evidence of a weak president trying to sell a bad deal.”
The State Department handed over the final parts of the Iran deal to Congress over the weekend, which means the review period officially started Monday.
The pushback over the U.N. Security Council vote is threatening to complicate the administration’s sales pitch to Congress, where Republicans have largely disavowed the deal and many Democrats remain skeptical.