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CONTACT: Brian Baluta [email protected]

LAS VEGAS – Yesterday, Senator Harry Reid’s handpicked U.S. Senate candidate, Catherine Cortez Masto, continued to blindly support the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, telling KSNV’s Jeff Gillan the agreement, which grants the world’s largest state sponsor of terror access to billions of dollars, is sound policy.

“Not only do we prevent them from having nuclear weapons for the foreseeable future, we are blanketing their country with inspectors,” said Cortez Masto.

What Cortez Masto, whose forays into national security and foreign policy have been shaky at best, failed to mention is that the deal includes a provision giving Iran up to 24 days to grant inspectors access to undeclared facilities. According to former IAEA officials, this greatly increases the probability that secret nuclear activities could escape detection.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dr. Joe Heck, who is an Iraq veteran, brigadier general in the Army Reserve, and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, criticized Cortez Masto’s recitation of White House talking points.

“Despite the claims of the administration and my opponent, this agreement in not built on verification, it is built on trust. It requires us to trust the largest exporter of terrorism in the world, a regime that built IEDs to kill and maim our troops in Iraq, whose Supreme leader said that Israel will not exist in 25 years, and recently test-fired two ballistic missiles with the phrase ‘Israel must be wiped out’ written in Hebrew on them,” said Heck.

Cortez Masto also failed to acknowledge that as part of the deal, Iran has been able to recover approximately $3 billion in frozen funds. Iran is expected to be granted access to another $50 billion to $55 billion in the coming months. Even the administration concedes that it does not know if Iran will use this windfall to fund terrorism and further destabilize the Middle East.

“We don’t know,” said State Department spokesman John Kirby when asked if Iran would use the money to fund terrorism, “We don’t know. We don’t have a way.”

“My opponent has demonstrated that her national security positions are informed by her party bosses and not an assessment of the facts. First she said we should be ‘opening ourselves up’ to the threat posed by the Syrian refugee crisis and then she flip-flopped following the Paris attacks. Nevadans cannot afford a U.S. Senator who puts party loyalty ahead of national security. When it comes to the safety of Americans, the learning curve is not forgiving,” said Heck.

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