Well over 30 years after he was set free from being held hostage for 444 days by his Middle Eastern captors, Texan Rick Kupke is still saying the Iranian regime cannot be trusted.
In an interview with Texas’s Star Telegram, Kupke—who was the last of 52 American hostages to surrender to the Iranians back in 1979—slammed the nuclear deal which was recently agreed upon between Iran and the P5+1.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) is currently under a 60-day congressional review, although it seems unlikely it will receive the 67-person vote required to override a presidential veto that many in Congress wish to attain in order to kill the deal altogether.
“This is probably the worst agreement of this kind I’ve seen in my lifetime,” Kupke told the Telegram. “I don’t know why they think the Iranians are going to abide by any agreement. They never have,” he said, evoking history. He continued, “I think it’s going to trigger a nuclear arms race… because everyone in the area is going to want to stay even with the Iranians as they violate the agreement.”
Kupke, and several of the former hostages with whom he was held, reportedly discussed the deal and found it all the more alarming that the four Americans currently being detained in Iran were not released as part of any agreement.
Both critics of the deal and the White House itself does not doubt that Iran will use the $150 billion which will be released to them to continue funding the revolutionary guard (IRGC) and continue fueling the terrorism they support throughout the Middle East and the world.
“Once they get this infusion of tens and tens of billions of dollars, I think everybody knows they will… probably start a war with Israel so they can wipe them out,” Kupke told the Telegram. “We are putting trust in a nation that sponsors terrorism. I don’t understand why we are doing that.”