U.S. defense secretary James Mattis, popularly known as ‘Mad dog Mattis speaking during a hearing at the House of Representatives said that Iran has remained compliant with the nuclear agreement and he thinks that the United States should remain a part of the agreement, which has been heavily criticized by his boss Donald Trump, who called it the ‘worst deal ever negotiated’ and didn’t provide any assurances whether he would continue with the agreement or not.
Speaking at the hearing, Mattis said, “I believe that they [Iran] fundamentally are [in compliance]. There have been certainly some areas where they were not temporarily in that regard, but overall our intelligence community believes that they have been compliant and the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] also says so….The point I would make is that 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……I believe at this point in time, absent indications to the contrary, it is something that the president should consider staying with.”
Under the deal negotiated in July 2015, Iran agreed with six other world powers including U.S. and Russia to reduce the number of its uranium enrichment centrifuges by two-thirds, cap its enrichment below the level needed for weapons-grade material, reduce its enriched uranium stockpile by 98 percent from around 10,000kg for 15 years, and allow international inspections, in exchange for a lifting of much of the international sanctions against Tehran. Though some U.S. sanctions are still in place, the majority have been removed.
President Trump is due to announce his decision on the deal by mid-October. Iran has warned that if the United States failed to certify the agreement, it would scrap the agreement as a whole.
