Tim Kaine: 'Blowing Up' Iran Nuclear Deal Not the Solution

Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Wednesday that the White House should have imposed the sanctions on Iran that the Senate passed last year instead of pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal.

"We gave the White House sanctions tools a year ago to go against Iran on all non-nuclear activity: their aggression in Yemen, their human rights violations, their violations of missile protocols," Kaine said on CNN. 

"We wanted to put the nuclear deal on ice — their nuclear program on ice — so we could go after and target these activities. And we gave the White House sanctions tools a year ago that they haven't used. They should've been using the sanctions power we gave them to go after these activities instead of doing nothing and then blowing up the one part of this that's working."

Kaine said Tuesday on PBS "NewsHour" that the decision will "make us less safe."

He added that ending the deal will "raise the risk of unnecessary war in the Middle East. And as a member of the Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committee, with a kid in the United States Marine Corps, I don't think we ought to be undermining diplomacy. I think we ought to be strengthening diplomacy."

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