Iranian negotiators seem pleased with themselves over the Iran nuclear deal announced Tuesday, but they had little to do with their success, former CIA Director James Woolsey tells
Newsmax TV's "Hard Line."
"It wasn't really any particular skill on their part. We were negotiating against ourselves and we defeated ourselves," Woolsey told host Ed Berliner.
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Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Pete Hoekstra agreed, saying, "We did the same thing with the Muslim brotherhood in Egypt and in Libya."
The deal, Woolsey said, makes things worse, freeing up $100 billion in frozen assets that Iran can now use to sponsor terrorism and proxy wars. And it will encourage other Arab countries in the region to develop their own nuclear programs in response, he added.
"Next crisis you have in the Middle East 10 years or so out, you could have four or five states involved and three or four of them having nuclear weapons," Woolsey said. "That's not a recipe for world peace, and it will certainly directly and indirectly affect us over here as well."
"We know what a good deal looks like," Hoekstra said. "A good deal is what we got with Libya where Muammar Gadhafi not only entered into an agreement with us but allowed our Secretary of Energy Spence Abraham and the United States government to come into Libya, pack up their centrifuges, take their materials for nuclear enrichment out of the country and ship them to the United States."
Hoekstra also expressed concern with the verbiage of the deal. The deal says the West will have 24/7 access to "declared facilities," he noted. "In my life on The Hill, I learned that words meant a lot and the word here you have to look at is 'declared facilities.'"
Hoekstra said he was more concerned about facilities that the United States doesn't know about.
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