A bad deal with Iran, rather than no deal at all, will be the catalyst for war, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio told a gathering of conservatives at Friday’s National Review Institute Ideas Summit in Washington, according to The Washington Post.

"The argument the White House uses, is if you're not in favor of this deal, you are in favor of war," Rubio said. "I would argue that a bad deal almost guarantees war, because Israel is not going to abide by any deal that they believe puts them and their existence in danger."

On Thursday, Rubio and fellow foreign policy hawk Sen. Tom Cotton, a freshman from Arkansas, ruffled colleagues' feathers by launching what CNN characterized as a "procedural sneak attack" to amend a bipartisan bill giving Congress oversight on the Obama administration’s deal with Tehran.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle fear the Rubio-Cotton "poison pill" amendments could cause the bipartisan coalition fighting for congressional oversight to implode, according to The Post.

Rubio’s amendment calls for Iran to recognize Israel’s "right to exist" as part of any arms deal, while Cotton’s would require Iran to "give up its nuclear facility before receiving any sanctions relief and to open its program to a fully verifiable inspections regime," The Hill reported.

Rubio, according to Bloomberg, acknowledged on Friday that there is truth in critics’ comments that Iran is one of many Mideast countries that don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist, but none of those nations are trying to build a nuclear weapon.

"And none of them have billions of dollars of sanctions, and if we lift those sanctions, we are handing over billions of dollars to the Iranian regime," he said.

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