Ryan Costello, Policy Director with the National Iranian American Council, issued the following statement regarding Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez’s (D-NJ) speech on the Senate floor attacking the Biden administration’s negotiations aimed at restoring the nuclear deal with Iran:

“Senator Menendez has been dangerously out of touch on Iran for years. He tried to kill Obama’s diplomacy by imposing sanctions in the middle of talks, and now is taking explicit aim at Biden’s. Like the other Iran hawks, Menendez has never proposed a viable alternative that could do a tenth of what the JCPOA accomplished and could achieve again. While he emphasizes his stylistic differences with Trump’s Iran policy, Menendez offers the exact same proposals as the previous administration that got us into this mess. Does Senator Menendez really think that more sanctions, more threats of war, and cutting off diplomacy under Biden will play out differently than it did under Trump? It is past time for Menendez to give up this act and let America’s diplomats do their jobs and restore the nuclear deal.”