By Eric Stock
WASHINGTON – The latest deadline for a final Iran nuclear agreement has been pushed to Friday.
U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis, R-Taylorville, said he won’t support a deal regardless of what it says. He told WJBC’s Dan Swaney he can’t trust either side in the negotiations.
“I don’t trust Iran. I don’t trust any government whose leaders preside over rallies chanting ‘Death to America,’ ” Davis said. “I don’t trust (the Obama administration) to give us a good deal.”
PODCAST: Listen to Dan and Colleen’s interview with Davis on WJBC.
The U.S. and partners are broker a deal for Iran to scale back its nuclear program.
Davis said Obama is trying to build a foreign policy legacy as President Bill Clinton did in signing a nuclear agreement with North Korea in 1994.
“We saw how that worked out in the long run because North Korea may have signed the dotted line but had no intention of following any of the rules in this agreement,” Davis said.
Cuba
Davis said he supports President Obama’s call to lift a half-century trade embargo with Cuba.
“Cuba has never been a threat to us, they are not pursuing a nuclear weapon,” Davis said. “Cuba is a nation I believe we should engage in trade with.”
Davis said he believes opening Cuba to trade could help destroy what he calls a “repressive” Castro regime.
President Barack Obama needs Congressional approval to lift the trade embargo with Cuba.
Army cuts
The Army plans to reduce its ranks by 40,000 over the next two years and layoff some 17,000 Army civilian employees, according to CBS News. Davis said these cuts are a ‘terrible thing to consider’ given all the instability in the Middle East.
“(This comes at) a time when we are seeing what the president called ‘the JV team’ of ISIS continue to expand their territory into somewhat of a nation state as large as the state of Illinois with many resources and billions in revenue to allow themselves to continue to govern in a heinous way,” Davis said.
A document obtained by USA Today cites budget tightening as the reason for the cuts.
Eric Stock can be reached at [email protected].
