Democrat presidential primary candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) told SiriusXM host Alex Marlow on Thursday’s Breitbart News Daily that the United States should rejoin the Iran nuclear deal as quickly as possible to prevent the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.

“Every day that goes forward when we are not party to the Iran nuclear agreement is a day that Iran gets closer and closer to developing a nuclear weapon, which I’m very concerned about. That poses a direct threat to the safety and security of the American people,” Gabbard said.

“This is why, even as I recognize there are flaws in the Iran nuclear agreement, we are better off actually being in the agreement, making sure Iran is in the agreement, where we have access to make sure that they are in compliance, and then being able to simultaneously work on actually strengthening it, using diplomacy to be able to get longer dates of the sunset provisions that were included in that agreement, dealing with some of those other issues,” she said.

“If we continue down the path that we are on, that this administration has taken in pulling out from the Iran nuclear agreement — implementing far greater draconian sanctions, deploying more troops to the region — we are not only pushing our country closer and closer to a war with Iran that would be far more devastating and costly than anything we saw in the war with Iraq, we will continue to see Iran get closer to development of a nuclear weapon,” Gabbard contended.

Iran has been violating the nuclear deal with increasingly serious actions over the past year. Most of these actions were ostensibly justified not by U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal, but by the failure of European nations to meet Iranian demands for concessions that would offset the impact of U.S. sanctions.

On Thursday, the Iranian nuclear agency announced it has resumed uranium enrichment at the heavily fortified underground facility at Fordow, a direct violation of the nuclear deal verified by the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Even European leaders who remain supportive of the nuclear deal expressed alarm at Iran’s actions and have privately warned Tehran they might withdraw from the deal themselves if the violations continue.

“Iran’s expansion of proliferation-sensitive activities raises some concerns that Iran is positioning itself to have the option of a rapid nuclear breakout. It is now time for all nations to reject this regime’s nuclear extortion and take serious steps to increase pressure. Iran’s continued and nuclear provocations demand such action,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Thursday.

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