President Trump could be persuaded to remain in the Iran nuclear agreement next month “if we’re close” to an agreement to improve the pact’s flaws, Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo suggested Thursday.
“It depends, clearly, if we’re close,” Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when asked if he would advise Trump to stick with the nuclear deal or withdraw. “Imagine we’re close to achieving the fix that the president has asked the State Department to achieve?”
WATCH: Mike Pompeo says Trump could stick with the Iran nuclear deal “if we’re close” to a fix pic.twitter.com/JPzMMeLNT0
— Washington Examiner (@dcexaminer) April 12, 2018
Pompeo is currently the CIA director, but was one of the foremost critics of the Iran nuclear deal when he served as a House Republican from Kansas. Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and picked Pompeo as his successor in March, just two months before a May 12 deadline to decide whether to bring back the economic sanctions that former President Barack Obama waived when the Iran deal was first implemented.
“I want to fix this deal,” Pompeo said. “That’s the objective. I think that’s in the best interest of [the United States].”
“What we’re wanting to do is come up with a package across the board of European and U.S. cooperation to achieve our joint goals,” one European diplomat told the Washington Examiner in March. “The redline from the European side is that we will not rewrite the JCPOA.”
Pompeo emphasized that the Europeans will face additional pressure on that front. “If there’s no chance that we can fix it, I will recommend to the president that we do our level best to work with our allies to achieve a better outcome and a better deal,” he said. “Even after May 12, there’s still much diplomatic work to be done.”
