The incoming Trump administration should perform a comprehensive review of last summer’s Iran nuclear deal and more effectively block Iran’s ability to obtain a nuclear weapon, Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of state Rex Tillerson said Wednesday.
Trump has called the nuclear agreement “the worst deal ever negotiated” and promised early in his campaign to dismantle it. Tillerson presented a softer approach during his confirmation hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
“If confirmed, my recommendation … is to do a full review of that agreement as well as any number of side agreements that I understand are part of that agreement,” Tillerson said, and noted that Trump is on the same page.
The review would include the agreement’s verification and enforcement mechanisms, he said.
Tillerson criticized the agreement in its current form for not comprehensively blocking Iran from attaining a nuclear weapon and said the agreement as it stands allows Iran to break out after it expires.
“Iran cannot have a nuclear [weapon]. What happens at the end, as you point out, is they go right back to where they were and we’ve not achieved our objective.”
However, he said components of the deal could be helpful for definitively denying Iran that possibility.
“My intention is to use the elements of this agreement that may be helpful to us in addressing the ‘what comes next’ when this agreement is over—or what replaces it—which has to be: we have once and for all blocked Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon,” he said.
“The real important question is, what comes at the end of this agreement?” he continued. “What comes at the end of this agreement must be a mechanism that does, in fact, deny Iran the ability to develop a nuclear weapon.”
The agreement should ensure that Iran cannot enrich uranium, he said, but should also give the country “the access and the means to peaceful uses of nuclear materials.”
“The other side of that is what does Iran get,” he said. “Nuclear power, medical applications and industrial applications, but that would be done under a very controlled process, working with other partners.”
In an early round of questioning, Tillerson criticized the nuclear deal for not denying Iran the ability to purchase a nuclear weapon. He later corrected that remark and confirmed he misspoke after notice from Delaware senator Chris Coons, who cited the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) as well as a provision in the nuclear deal.
Update: This post has been updated to reflect additional comment from Tillerson, as well as an admission that he misspoke.
