Ex-CIA director: Trump leaving Iran deal will alienate US allies

Former CIA Director John Brennan says President Trump risks escalating tensions among U.S. allies by threatening to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Speaking on NBC’s “Today” on Thursday, Brennan was asked by host Matt Lauer whether Trump risks “owning” a nuclear Iran if he quits the 2015 nuclear agreement signed under former President Obama.

“Well he certainly has another issue and another problem,” Brennan said. “He also alienates a lot of our partners and allies that were part of that agreement.”

{mosads}”And I think he runs the risk of escalated tensions in the Gulf that could be down to our detriment and to potential risk to U.S. military in the region,” Brennan added.

This isn’t the first time Brennan has criticized the Trump administration over plans to exit the agreement. Last year, Brennan warned Trump that leaving the deal “would be disastrous.”

“It would be the height of folly if the next administration were to tear up that agreement,” Brennan said at the time.

On Friday, Trump announced at the White House that his administration would declare Iran in violation of the agreement, but stopped short of exiting the nuclear pact altogether. Under law, the U.S. president must periodically recertify that Iran is in compliance with the deal.

“I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification,” Trump said. “We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout.”

The day before, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the deal a “countdown clock” ticking toward Iran’s development of a nuclear weapon.

“What we really have is a countdown clock to when Iran can resume its nuclear weapons development program,” Tillerson said Thursday. “That sounds an awful like some North Korean deals that we’ve seen in the past.”