We were pretty hard on Chuck Hagel when he was nominated to be President Obama’s defense secretary. Like others, we raked him over the coals for saying during his confirmation hearings that Obama administration policy toward Iran was about “containment” — i.e., boxing it in after it had developed nukes — rather than preventing Tehran from getting nukes.
In response, Sen. Chuck Schumer visited The Post to reassure us that Hagel wouldn’t be a problem here.
Turns out Schumer was right. Hagel isn’t the problem. The president is.
Look at the Iran deal Secretary of State John Kerry was crafting in Geneva. It would have eased sanctions for Tehran while getting little in return.
It has also made for an interesting new Coalition of the Willing: There’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who calls it the “deal of the century” for Iran. Adding insult to injury, the Israelis believe the Obama administration initially misled them about the details of the deal before they could learn what was really in it.
France is another member of this coalition, and we apparently we have Paris to thank for scuttling this very bad deal. Meanwhile, here at home the coalition is rounded out by the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, who is calling for new sanctions — and spoke the obvious Sunday when he said on ABC that “we seem to want the deal almost more than the Iranians.”
By contrast, our own Sen. Schumer has been relatively silent. When we reached his office, he gave us a statement saying that he was “dubious” about the deal, is exploring “further details” but “is worried “that we are reducing sanctions while Iran is not reducing its nuclear capabilities.”
Here’s how that sounds to us: “If you like the sanctions we have on Iran, I hope you get to keep them.”