WASHINGTON — Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly plugged her forthcoming memoir while carving out a tough stance on Iran — declaring that “no deal is better than a bad deal” with Tehran — in a speech Wednesday before an influential Jewish group.
Taking the stage at the American Jewish Committee, Clinton referenced the many months she committed to “writing and rewriting” her book, set to come out next month. One feel-good excerpt already leaked around Mother’s Day.
“It’s nice being out of my attic and being here in support of all of you,” she quipped.
Clinton joked that the book would be “a light summer read that I’m sure will be great at the beach,” then delivered a dense foreign policy speech centered around “hard choices” — the book’s title.
Appearing energetic and spry, she made no reference to the flare-up this week over her health, after Karl Rove suggested she may have suffered brain damage in a fall last year that prompted a visit to the hospital and required her to wear vision-correcting glasses.
Clinton’s team blasted Rove’s comments as an outrage.
Clinton spoke from a teleprompter, as host David Harris of the AJC noted while killing time before her arrival. “The teleprompter tells me what Hillary Clinton’s going to say,” he joked.
On Iran, Clinton described her own role developing a strategy to present Tehran with a “hard choice:” abandon its nuclear program or face crippling sanctions.
But she also gave herself some distance from the ongoing talks. “To get there, we will have to be tough, clear-eyed and ready to walk away and increase the pressure if need be,” she said.
“No deal is better than a bad deal,” she told the pro-Israel crowd.
Even if an agreement gets reached, she said, “Iran’s support for terrorism and its aggressive behavior” remains “a threat to the United States and our allies.” And she noted there would be opportunities to put in place additional sanctions “in the future” to ensure compliance.
Clinton also referenced stalled Mideast peace talks, and talked up her own time lining up “face-to-face” negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians.
“America’s commitment to Israel will never waver. That is not a hard choice,” she said, demanding that Hamas recognize Israel’s right to exist.
She promised her book would tell more about her efforts to maintain the “rock solid” relationship with Israel. She said it would detail “the endless meetings, the vigorous discussions, even arguments, the endless phone calls.”