By channeling this money to Tehran and giving the mullahs international legitimacy, the Obama administration is fueling the greatest growth in Iranian power since the Islamic Republic was established in 1979. What's worse, for months Iran has telegraphed in word and deed how it plans to utilize this newfound power—namely, to dominate the Middle East and threaten American security.

Rubio is wrong or misleading in everything he says here. The money that has been freed up by sanctions relief are Iranian assets that had been inaccessible to them because of sanctions on their nuclear program. Now that Iran has complied with the terms of the deal, they are gaining access to their own money from which they had been cut off. As Fred Kaplan notes, this rewards Iran for doing what the U.S. wants it to do. The greatest growth in Iranian power in the region came when the U.S. toppled its hostile neighboring regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq.