During his current book tour, former Vice President Dick Cheney has been criticizing the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration.
On
"Fox News Sunday," host Chris Wallace asked him if part of the blame for the Iran nuclear crisis might sit at the feet of the George W. Bush administration in which he served.
The answer is no, Cheney said.
Wallace noted that in 2007, there were no known centrifuges in Iran, but by 2009, when Bush and Cheney left office, there were more than 5,000.
"I don't think of it that way," Cheney said. "In fact, there was military action that had an impact on the Iranians. It was when we took down Saddam Hussein. There was a period of time when they stopped the program because they were afraid what we did to Saddam we were going to do to them next."
That action also was behind Libyan leader Muammar Gadhafi surrendering his nuclear program, Cheney said. "We did a lot to limit nuclear proliferation in the region while we were there."
Obama, on the other hand, talked a lot about military action, but nobody believed him because of the "red line" promise he had broken with Syria.
Obama "always dealt from a position of weakness," Cheney said, "which I don't think we would have done.
Cheney's new book, written with his daughter, Liz, is called,
"Exceptional: Why the World Needs a Powerful America," published by Threshold Editions.
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