![Beto O'Rourke [image courtesy Beto O'Rourke for Congress flickr]](https://staticr1.blastingcdn.com/media/photogallery/2018/5/1/660x290/b_502x220x82/beto-orourke-image-courtesy-beto-orourke-for-congress-flickr_1966251.jpg "Beto O'Rourke [image courtesy Beto O'Rourke for Congress flickr]")
Rep. Beto O’Rourke, D-Texas has been touted as the great hope to knock Ted Cruz out of the Senate. The trans-ethnic candidate has been relying on charisma, good looks, and a lot of cash from outside the state. However, he has taken quite a few policy positions on issues ranging from drug legalization to immigration that most Texans would tend to find off-putting. The latest problem to dog the long-shot Democratic candidate is the Iran nuclear weapons deal, which the Israeli Mossad revealed to be a sham. O’Rourke is on record as being in favor of the agreement, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
What Beto wrote
Three years ago, during the height of the Iran nuclear weapons deal controversy, Rep. O’Rourke wrote an op-ed for the El Paso Times that not only defended the agreement but attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for opposing it. O’Rourke explicitly explained why he boycotted Netanyahu’s speech before a joint session of Congress during which he told why the Iran deal was a bad idea. O’Rourke did not explain why he thought that the agreement would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear arsenal. He just opposed Netanyahu’s attempt to explain Israel’s position to Congress.
Cruz pounces
Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the man O’Rourke proposes to replace in the Senate, understandably pounced.
He noted Netanyahu’s press conference during which the Israeli prime minister laid bare how Iran had lied about its nuclear weapons program. The Mossad acquired half a ton of documents on the atomic weapons program, proving the deal that O’Rourke supported to be a sham.
What happens now?
O’Rourke is now in a quandary. He has supported a deal that has become the 21st Century equivalent of the Munich Agreement.
O'Rourke was now in the position of a 1930s appeaser when Hitler swallowed up the entirety of Czechoslovakia. O’Rourke has some hard decisions to make if he is to remain a viable candidate.
The congressman could repudiate his previous position and now agree with the consensus that the agreement that Obama struck with the mullahs to be a craven example of appeasement and self-delusion.
That course would be the honorable one, though one that would be politically dubious as it would be an admission that O’Rourke was wrong about an essential foreign policy issue.
On the other hand, O’Rourke could embark on the course being taken by former Obama officials such as former Secretary of State John Kerry.
Every detail PM Netanyahu presented yesterday was every reason the world came together to apply years of sanctions and negotiate the Iran nuclear agreement - because the threat was real and had to be stopped. It's working! That’s why Israeli security experts are speaking out. 1/4
— John Kerry (@JohnKerry) May 1, 2018
In other words, O’Rourke can try to say that Netanyahu’s revelation is something that it is not. Unfortunately, if he makes that gambit, Cruz will rip him to pieces.
