Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has repeatedly criticized President Obama's deal with Iran, but on Wednesday the Florida senator explained why he believes the agreement turned out so poorly.

According to Rubio, Obama "failed with Iran because he has failed as president."

"This may be the best deal that a weak president can achieve, but a strong, trusted and respected America can do much better," Rubio wrote in a column for Fox News.

Rubio previously expressed his disapproval of the negotiations with Iran in April when he called the framework of the deal a "diplomatic failure" and said any agreement allowing Iranian leaders to maintain centrifuges in the country would be a "colossal mistake." Now that the specifics have been unveiled, the junior senator says "the breadth and scope of Obama's capitulations to Tehran are startling, even by his standards."

"[M]ost alarming of all is the realization that President Obama decided to elevate an evil and illegitimate third-rate autocracy," he wrote.

In 2007, Obama was asked by a reporter if he would be willing to meet with Iranian, Syrian, Venezuelan, Cuban and North Korean leaders "without preconditions," to which the then-senator responded: "I would."

According to Rubio, the aforementioned admission — in addition to the president's remark in April that the U.S. was limited to dealing with Iran by cutting a deal, starting a war, or 'hoping for the best' — "must have convinced the mullahs they had the American president right where they wanted him."

"The price for President Obama's penchant for negotiating from weakness is now clear," Rubio wrote. "The deal announced with much fanfare by the White House two weeks ago comes nowhere close to the deal President Obama promised the American people he'd get."

As opposed to what he believes has been "weak and feckless" foreign policy under the Obama administration, Rubio advised fellow presidential candidates to "campaign for the office on the principle that has long guided American policy toward Iran — that the regime cannot have mastery of dangerous nuclear technologies. Period."

"Making that case begins now, by making it clear to the American people and the world that this is President Obama's deal with Iran, not America's deal with Iran," he wrote.

The Florida Republican says the next president "must reimpose" the economic and political sanctions levied against Iran and "work with Congress to impose new crushing sanctions on Iran's leaders for their ongoing support for terrorism and brutal human rights abuses."

According to Rubio, Obama's acquiescence to Iran has increased the difficulty of preventing the Muslim country from developing a nuclear weapon, but not impossible. The senator urged others in the GOP presidential field to "begin making the case for a new approach toward this critical issue" sooner rather than later.

"Our allies and adversaries alike want to know whether America will continue the retreat from the world begun by President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, or will America return to its indispensable leadership role in the world?" he wrote.

A CNN/ORC poll released on Tuesday found that more than half of Americans (52 percent) want Congress to vote down the nuclear deal with Iran.