CIA Director Mike Pompeo, U.S. President Donald Trump's nominee to be secretary of state, said at his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday that he wants "to fix" the international Iran nuclear deal.
U.S. sanctions that were lifted under the 2015 agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, will resume unless Trump waives them again on May 12. Trump has effectively set that as a deadline for European powers to "fix the terrible flaws" of the deal.
Pompeo, a strong opponent of the nuclear pact, said he would still push for a tougher deal even if Trump decides not to waive the sanctions.
"There is continued interest on the part of Iran to stay in this deal. It's in their own economic self-interest to do so," he said.
Pompeo said Iran was not "racing" to develop a nuclear weapon before the deal was finalized, and that he did not expect it would do so if the deal were to fall apart.
"There is no indication that I'm aware of that if the deal were no longer to exist that they would immediately race to a nuclear weapon today," he said.
Pompeo, who disputed the notion that he is a foreign policy hawk during his hearing, said he believes diplomacy is the best way to keep Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron are both due to visit Washington before May 12, and Pompeo said he was "confident they would discuss the Iran issue at length with Trump."
Sen. Bob Corker, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, said it was still possible that Germany, France and the United States could come up with an agreement that would keep Trump from ending the waiver.
Pompeo, meanwhile, blamed tensions between Moscow and Washington on Russia's "bad behavior" and said he would support more U.S. sanctions against Russia.
"[Russian President] Vladimir Putin has not yet received the message sufficiently," Pompeo told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during the five-hour-long confirmation hearing.
He said Russia's push into Ukraine and other countries needed to be curbed. "We need to push back in each place and in every vector," Pompeo said. "We need to make sure that Vladimir Putin doesn't succeed in what he believes his ultimate goal is."
Critics, including some in Trump's own Republican Party, have accused the president of taking too soft a line on the Russian president. Trump has denied that – and has been strongly critical in recent days of Moscow's backing of Syrian President Bashar Assad – but he has also talked of wanting better relations with Putin.
