President Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday defended the emerging terms of the administration's deal to end the war with Iran after Republicans criticized them. Sen. Lindsey Graham posted that the deal could make Iran "more powerful over time," while Sen. Ted Cruz said he fears a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for relief on economic sanctions would be a "disastrous mistake," the Washington Post reports. Trump posted that he wouldn't make a bad deal, per the New York Times. "It isn't even fully negotiated yet," the president wrote. "So don't listen to the losers, who are critical about something they know nothing about."
GOP Sens. Roger Wicker and Thom Tillis also cast doubt on the effectiveness of the deal, with Wicker posting that a reported "60-day ceasefire—with the belief that Iran will ever engage in good faith—would be a disaster." A former secretary of state for Trump, Mike Pompeo—referring to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and weapons of mass destruction—said the plan would "pay the IRGC to build a WMD program and terrorize the world." Steven Cheung, a senior White House official, responded on X that Pompeo "should shut his stupid mouth and leave the real work to the professionals."
At a news conference in India, Rubio said Trump's resolve to keep Iran from having a nuclear weapon "shouldn't be questioned by anybody," per the Post. "The idea that somehow this president … is going to somehow agree to a deal that ultimately winds up putting Iran in a stronger position when it comes to nuclear ambitions is absurd." A spokesman for Tehran's government mockingly addressed the issue with a post of a famous relief carved into an archaeological site in Iran that portrays a Roman emperor submitting with a bow to a king of the Sassanians, an ancient Iranian empire, per the Times. "In the Roman mind, Rome was the undisputed center of the world," the post said. "The Iranians shattered that illusion."
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