Schumer Attacks Trump for Repeating Obama's Iran Diplomacy

Democrats keep trying to out-hawk Republicans, even though the mood in America has shifted toward diplomacy.

President Donald Trump wants a deal. The Iranian government wants a deal. The American and Iranian people all want a deal. And there's a deal on the table. But Sen. Chuck Schumer (D–N.Y.) is not happy with it.

"When it comes to negotiating with the terrorist government of Iran, Trump's all over the lot. One day he sounds tough, the next day he's backing off," Schumer said in a video message posted to X on Monday night. He accused Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff of negotiating "a secret side deal" that "lets Iran get away with everything" and claimed that "TACO Trump"—an acronym for "Trump Always Chickens Out"—is "already folding."

Schumer clarified on Facebook that he was responding to a report in Axios, confirmed on Tuesday by The New York Times, that the Trump administration had proposed an interim deal to avoid a nuclear crisis. Under the reported terms of the offer, Iran would give up its domestic nuclear program in exchange for joining an international uranium enrichment consortium.

It's not even likely that Iran will accept the deal currently on the table. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei told an audience on Wednesday that "the plan that the Americans have presented is 100 percent opposed to [the slogan] we can do it." But Schumer seems to oppose negotiations on a deeper level. His video sounded awfully similar to attacks levied by hawkish Republicans against the Obama and Biden administrations during their negotiations with Iran.

When Iran diluted its enriched uranium and released American hostages in August 2023, three Republican members of Congress accused then-President Joe Biden of a "secret agreement" that "threatens U.S. national security." And when former President Barack Obama reached his own deal to restrain the Iranian nuclear program, Republican lawmakers claimed that he was being "fleeced" in "secret side-deals."

To be fair to Schumer, he has consistently been on Republicans' side, stating in 2015 that "the very real risk that Iran will not moderate and will, instead, use the agreement to pursue its nefarious goals is too great." Some Republican opponents of the deal at the time insisted that they only wanted a better deal, only to come out in favor of war in later years.

The dilemma that Trump, Biden, and Obama all faced is the same. Iran has a nuclear program that could be used to build weapons in the future—it is the "only non-nuclear-weapon state" to produce large quantities of 60 percent enriched uranium, according to a recent report by the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency—an outcome the United States has promised to stop by force. Getting Iran to voluntarily give up its nuclear capabilities would require offering serious incentives, and many members of Congress clearly prefer war over concessions.

But the American people prefer a deal over a war. A poll published by the University of Maryland last month shows that 69 percent of Americans, including 64 percent of Republicans, prefer to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis with a negotiated deal, and only 14 percent of Americans want a war with Iran. So do Iranians, for that matter. Polling from last year shows that Iranians want a nuclear deal due to the economic cost of isolation.

The issue is partially self-inflicted for Trump. Obama had successfully negotiated a deal in 2015 that would put the Iranian nuclear program under international control in exchange for lifting the U.S. economic embargo against Iran. Trump pulled out of the deal in 2018, claiming that he could get a better deal through pressure. Instead, the U.S. and Iran escalated to the brink of war, and the Iranian nuclear program has continued with no limits for nearly a decade.

Unlike in 2015, when congressional Republicans voted unanimously against the deal, a large part of the Republican coalition now seems to favor diplomacy. Conservative media personalities such as Steve Bannon, Tucker Carlson, and Charlie Kirk have been loudly warning against the threat of war.

"Didn't we learn our lesson when we went to war in Iraq and killed Saddam Hussein because of 'weapons of mass destruction?' Did we ever find any?" asked Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R–Ga.) in a long screed on X last month.

On the other hand, some Democrats have taken up a strategy of trying to out-hawk Trump on foreign policy. During the 2024 election, Kamala Harris' campaign attacked Trump for failing to "respond" hard enough to Iran during his first term and criticizing economic sanctions. During the confirmation hearing for Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby in March, several Democrats joined Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) in attacking Trump's diplomatic "capitulations."

Another wrinkle is that Iran's archenemy, Israel, has reportedly prepared to attack the Iranian nuclear program no matter what the U.S. does. The Iranian government has said that it would consider the U.S. a "participant" in any Israeli attack and respond accordingly. Trump publicly warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to attack Iran "because we're very close to a solution."

Attacking Trump's diplomacy makes sense for Schumer from both perspectives. On one hand, he's portraying Democrats as the tougher party on national security. On the other, he's shoring up his pro-Israel credentials. ("My job is to keep the left pro-Israel," Schumer told The New York Times earlier this year.) Yet he's swimming against the tide of his own base—and overwhelming public opinion—to do so.

Harris' former foreign policy adviser, Phil Gordon, had a slightly different view on how Democrats should approach the issue: "We should focus our outrage on the many genuinely outrageous aspects of Trump's foreign policy, and if he happens to get a nuclear deal that is in our interest we should support it."