The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee criticized the Iran nuclear deal’s limitations on Tuesday and called Iran’s threatening rhetoric toward America and Israel "very disconcerting."
Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Energy Ernest Moniz, and Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew defended the nuclear deal to a skeptical House committee.
Rep. Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.) said that the deal would only delay, not end, Iran’s nuclear ambitions.
"Fifteen years from now, Iran could essentially be off the hook," Engel said. "If they choose, Iran’s leaders could produce weapons-grade uranium without any limitation. They could use advanced centrifuges to speed this process even further. This amounts to Iran being a legitimized nuclear threshold state in the year 2030."
"What happens then? Are we back to square one? Is this deal just pushing the pause button for 15 years?"
Engel called the violent rhetoric emanating from the highest levels of Iran’s government "very disconcerting."
"I have trepidation that, barely a week after the Iranians signed the deal with us, there was the Supreme Leader, the Ayatollah, chanting Death to America, Death to Israel," Engel said. "You’d think that after the agreement was signed there might be a modicum of goodwill to keep quiet for a week or two, but it was back to business as usual."
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei is the regime’s most vocal proponent of Iran’s revolutionary ideology, which aims at the destruction of the United States and Israel.
On Saturday, Khamenei tweeted a picture of President Obama holding a gun to his head. The accompanying text read, "We welcome no war, nor do we initiate any war, but if any war happens, the one who will emerge loser will be the aggressive and criminal U.S."
U.S. lawmakers, including some Democrats, have pointed to Iran’s history of threatening behavior as a reason to be wary of a nuclear deal.