U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho)
U.S. Senator Jim Risch (R-Idaho)

BOISE - On Wednesday, Idaho Senator Jim Risch, a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, co-led his Republican colleagues in a press conference to discuss the Biden Administration’s efforts to forge a nuclear deal with Iran.

In his message to the President about the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) negotiations, Risch urged Biden to "walk away from the Iran deal."

“The first thing we need to do about this is walk away," said Risch. "As Senator Cruz said, it is absolutely stunning that this deal is being negotiated by two of our worst enemies on the planet. You’ve got the Iranians and you’ve got the Russians. They won’t even let the Americans in the room. Would any of you sign a deal or go into negotiations where they wouldn’t let you in the room when they were negotiating? These two are negotiating the deal and our people are out in the hall at the kids table looking through a keyhole at what is going on in there. This is not right.”

He continued, “We should walk. This doesn’t need to be done right now. And particularly, it doesn’t need to be done when we have the problems going on that we have in Ukraine. We should walk. Mr. President, you are the only one in America doing business with the Russians. Stop doing business with the Russians. Don’t have them negotiating for us. Walk on this deal.”

The JCPOA is a detailed, 159-page agreement with five annexes reached by Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). 

Risch also provided comment on the threat of nuclear war:

“In the last 10 days, we have seen a direct threat by a nuclear power country against the United States of America – a threat to actually use nuclear weapons on us," said Risch. "We all heard, all of you heard, Putin say that, if indeed we did anything to interfere in Ukraine, that we would see death and destruction and the kind of harm here in the United States that this country has never seen before. He was talking about nuclear weapons of course. That puts this into perspective.”

He continued, “The magnitude of what we are talking about here, of having another country, another bad country, have nuclear weapons is a colossal problem for the world. And, particularly colossal problems for its enemies, of which we are of course listed.”