Fake News on Secretary Mattis and the Iran Nuke Deal

US Defense. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis

Supporters of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran (the JCPOA) have been very active on social media this afternoon claiming that Secretary of Defense James Mattis broke with President Trump when he told the Senate Armed Services Committee today that the United States should remain in the Iran deal.

JCPOA supporters are worried that President Trump will not certify to Congress by an October 15 deadline that the JCPOA is in America’s national security interests and that Iran is in compliance. But after the president called the agreement “an embarrassment to the United States” in his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last month, JCPOA advocates are even more worried that he will withdraw the U.S. from the agreement, possibly using a plan drafted by Ambassador John Bolton, which National Review published on August 28.

Prodded by JCPOA supporters, the media is playing up Mattis’s statement today as showing that the Secretary has suddenly turned on the president.

This is not the case. In fact, General Mattis made clear during his Senate confirmation hearing on January 12, 2017, that he supported America’s remaining in the Iran nuclear deal. Mattis also sided with other cabinet members in April 2017 and July 2017 in recommending that Trump certify the nuclear deal to Congress. Media stories that Mattis suddenly decided to oppose the president on the JCPOA are fake news.

General Mattis is a good man and an American hero. I wish Mattis would follow Ambassador Bolton’s plan and implement a “clean” withdrawal from the deeply flawed Iran nuclear deal. The experts said in their letter: “It is time to move beyond President Obama’s appeasement of Iran and to begin work on a comprehensive new approach that fully addresses the menace that the Iranian regime increasingly poses to American and international security.”

This letter was signed by many former senior U.S. government national-security experts, including the former director of Sandia National Laboratory, Paul Robinson; former undersecretary of state for arms control, Robert Joseph; former undersecretary of defense for policy, Douglas Feith; former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, General William Boykin; and dozens of other former State Department and Defense Department officials.

We will soon learn President Trump’s decision on how he wants to proceed on the Iran nuclear deal. The deal is so extremely flawed that there is no realistic chance of fixing it. The only option is a clean withdrawal using the Bolton plan.  

Defense Secretary Mattis suggests sticking with Iran nuclear deal

U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis testifies before a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Political and Security Situation in Afghanistan on Capitol Hill in Washington U.S. October 3 2017

WASHINGTON (Reuters) OCT. 3, 2017 - U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said on Tuesday the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it were proven Tehran that was not abiding by the agreement or that it was not in the U.S. national interest to do so.
Mattis said he supported U.S. President Donald Trump’s review of the agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear program.
Trump is weighing whether the deal serves U.S. security interests as he faces a mid-October deadline for certifying that Iran is complying with the pact, a decision that could sink an agreement strongly supported by the other powers that negotiated it.
“If we can confirm that Iran is living by the agreement, if we can determine that this is in our best interest, then clearly we should stay with it,” Mattis told a Senate hearing.
The White House had no immediate comment on Mattis’ remarks, which once again highlighted the range of views on key policy issues within the Trump administration.
If Trump does not recertify by Oct. 15 that Iran is in compliance with the agreement, Congress would have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Tehran suspended under the accord.
That would let Congress, controlled by Trump’s fellow Republicans, effectively decide whether to kill the deal. Although congressional leaders have declined to say whether they would seek to reimpose sanctions, Republican lawmakers were united in their opposition to the deal reached by Democratic former President Barack Obama.

 

    U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis

Last month, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani said the nuclear accord cannot be renegotiated.

Trump has said he has made a decision on what to do about the agreement but has not said what he has decided.
The prospect of Washington reneging on the agreement has worried some U.S. partners that helped negotiate it, especially as the world grapples with North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile development.
The deal was signed by Britain, China, France, Germany, Iran, Russia and the United States.
White House national security adviser H.R. McMaster has defended Trump’s criticism of the deal, saying it had the “fatal flaw” of a ‘sunset clause,’ under which some of the deal’s restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire from 2025