Senator Mark Kelly Criticizes Trump Administration's Iran Diplomacy

A Democratic senator and veteran once again took aim at the Trump administration over the Iran war on Sunday, claiming that the president’s chosen diplomats Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff are not up to the task.

Sen. Mark Kelly was on CBS’s Face the Nation as he implored the president to put more experienced diplomatic representatives in charge and ditch his “real estate buddy” Witkoff, as well as his son-in-law.

Both men have helmed negotiations between the U.S. and Iran for months as the Trump administration has struggled to get out of a war it promised would only last for a few weeks.

"I would suggest to him, though, that the solution is not to do the same thing that he's been doing — not to have his real estate buddy and his son-in-law in charge of a negotiation,” said Kelly.

Instead, he said, Trump should “put some people in here that know how to do this, how to talk to the Iranians, and put a coalition together, bring our allies back together.”

Kelly endured a public spat with the Department of Defense and an attempt to change his rank by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth last year over his criticism of the agency, which a judge said was illegal and reversed.

But he’s been a chief critic of the administration’s foreign policy since the end of February, when Trump launched a war with Iran and vowed to dismantle Iran’s nuclear program. Kelly and others questioned the need, after strikes on Iranian targets last summer supposedly “obliterated” the targets, which were three Iranian nuclear development facilities.

Now, with the nuclear program firmly in the background, the Trump administration has turned to attempting to find a way back to the status quo. The president spent weeks securing a deal announced in June, which re-opened the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping traffic but did little else in the short term. That deal, and the U.S.-Iran ceasefire, have since collapsed.

White House officials have been struggling to force Iran to re-open the strait or secure unrestricted safe passage for shipping traffic for months, to no avail.

In recent days the president has suggested that he has little interest in negotiation, and claimed that Iran frequently goes back on its word. What that means for the war, the Strait of Hormuz, and the global oil markets currently in turmoil due to all of the above, is still unclear. This past week, at a Cabinet meeting, he threatened to bomb another area of an Iranian nuclear site struck by the U.S. last year where satellite imagery has shown workers digging in an area called “Pickaxe Mountain”.

Gas prices in the United States are now well north of $4 a gallon on average, putting a major dent in the summer travel season for millions of Americans while also driving up costs on nearly every sector of the goods economy. Grocery prices remain high and Republicans have largely failed to make their case that the president and their party are laser-focused on affordability and bringing down consumer spending pressures, as Trump’s approval rating has sunk to some of its lowest recorded levels.

Democrats do not poll any better than Trump on the issue of Iran, though, as the party has been split in its response with some hawkish members including those tied to the party establishment cheering the initial strikes.

On Saturday, Trump was once again touting the prospect of another possible ceasefire deal on Truth Social, claiming that he’d called off a wave of U.S. strikes to allow negotiations to continue.

“Get to work, everybody, and get it DONE,” Trump seemingly urged all parties involved on Saturday.

Witkoff and Kushner were also tasked with bringing an end to the Ukraine-Russia war, something Trump repeatedly promised would be resolved on the first day of his second term, January 20, 2025. While they failed to make any significant progress before shifting their focus to Iran, it has been reported that they may visit Kyiv this month. It would be their first visit to Ukraine.