TEHRAN, Iran — When US presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump went head to head in their first debate on Sept. 26, Iran took up a significant part of the foreign policy discussion. During the debate, Republican Trump challenged Democrat Clinton’s policies while serving as secretary of state 2009-2013, saying, “You started the Iran deal. That’s another beauty where you have a country that was ready to fall; they were doing so badly. They were choking on the sanctions. And now they’re going to be actually probably a major power at some point pretty soon, the way they’re going.”
The former first lady, however, defended the nuclear deal with Iran. She said, “When I became secretary of state, Iran was weeks away from having enough nuclear material to form a bomb. … I spent a year and a half putting together a coalition that included Russia and China to impose the toughest sanctions on Iran. And we did drive them to the negotiating table. And my successor, John Kerry, and President [Barack] Obama got a deal that put a lid on Iran’s nuclear program without firing a single shot.”
