Former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas, said the United States has 60 days to find out whether Iran will honor the war-ending memorandum of understanding President Donald Trump signed at Versailles, telling Newsmax on Thursday that Washington is "dealing with the devil" and should be prepared to "finish the job" if Tehran cheats.

Hutchison, who served as U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2017 to 2021, spoke on "American Agenda " a day after Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed the 14-point interim agreement, which starts a 60-day clock on negotiations over Iran's nuclear program and commits Tehran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic without tolls.

Asked whether Tehran would alter its behavior over the past four decades, Hutchison was blunt.

"It's hard to say that you can trust a country that kills 30,000 of its own people and then hangs their soccer player just before the World Cup," she said. "It's hard to put trust there. However, I think we are dealing with the devil, and we have to deal with the devil."

Hutchison said the next two months will determine whether U.S. and Israeli forces need to return to the offensive Trump launched in February.

"We have 60 days now to see if we have to go back in and finish the job, which I think a number of people hope that we will finish the job," she said. Trump told reporters at Versailles that "if it doesn't get done in 60 days, that's all right. We go back to bombing."

She argued the strategic landscape has shifted in Washington's favor because Sunni Arab states now share the cost of the conflict.

"We also have the support of the neighbors in the region, really for the first time," she said. "Besides Israel, we now have Qatar, UAE, the other countries, Saudi Arabia, the other countries that have gotten hit by Iran now are coming in with us and helping us to go forward, and they'll be on the lookout for any kind of mischief that Iran does immediately."

Pressed on next steps, Hutchison urged the administration to stop relitigating the war's terms and focus on outcomes.

"We are where we are now," she said. "Rather than trying to parse what's happening, we need to look at the results that we want. No nuclear, certainly keep the Strait of Hormuz open and keep working with our neighbors in the region to look for that real big thing that we could do."

She framed an expanded Abraham Accords as the strategic prize.

"That is increasing the Abraham Accords so that the countries of the Middle East are all more normalized, so that there can be security and hopefully peace on the road," she said.

The MOU defers the toughest issues, including the fate of Iran's enriched uranium stockpile, to the 60-day window. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran's missile program will not be on the table and that Iran will not ship its enriched uranium abroad.

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