The Patriot Post® · Kaine's Wrong: Clinton's Nuclear Record Is Tarnished

Tim Kaine vehemently defended Hillary Clinton’s foreign policy record during last night’s vice presidential debate, where he portrayed the former secretary of state as a successful negotiator and counter-terrorism strategist who helped purge a metastasizing jihad threat. Kaine posited that when Hillary Clinton took office in 2009, “Iran was racing toward a nuclear weapon and Russia was expanding its stockpile.” That all ended, he went on to claim, when Clinton helped forge the Russian START Treaty and laid the foundation for the Iran nuclear deal.

Throughout the debate, Kaine regurgitated his Iran pitch, repeatedly asserting that the “Iranian nuclear weapons program has been stopped.” He argued, “Clinton … worked with Russia to get them engaged in a community of nations to stop the Iranian nuclear weapons without firing a shot.” Except the the Iran nuclear deal has been an abject failure. And to argue otherwise is to ignore the facts.

Iran continues to enrich uranium for nefarious purposes despite the administration’s claims. In fact, the deal itself in shrouded in secrecy. A Washington Free Beacon analysis reveals, “The Obama administration misled journalists and lawmakers for more than nine months about a secret agreement to lift international sanctions on a critical funding node of Iran’s ballistic missile program.”

Ironically, the same failure on the nuclear front equally pertains to Russia. Kaine said, “Clinton has gone toe-to-toe with Russia. She went toe-to-toe with Russia as secretary of state to do the New START Agreement to reduce Russia’s nuclear stockpile.” Vladimir Putin evidently didn’t get the memo. According to another Washington Free Beacon report, “Russia increased its deployed nuclear warheads over the past six months under a strategic arms reduction treaty as U.S. nuclear warhead stocks declined sharply, according to the State Department.”

Mike Pence’s rebuttal best summed it up: “Hillary Clinton’s top priority when she became secretary of state was the Russian reset…. After the Russian reset, the Russians invaded Ukraine and took over Crimea. And the small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States.” Remember, Russia and Iran have a budding alliance, and both are good are two things: Lying and concealing. Which sounds awfully similar to what Kaine and Clinton ticket would bring in building on Obama’s beleaguered legacy.