Iran will be close to having enough material to make a nuclear weapon in just over a decade, even if the country goes along with the nuclear agreement with the U.S. and its allies, according to Gen. Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency.
Iran is a "wicked problem" President-elect Donald Trump must face in his upcoming administration, Hayden wrote an opinion piece for The Hill.
Hayden confirmed in the current deal between Iran and the U.S., the European Union, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom, Iran's nuclear capability has been diminished.
"The country is further away from a bomb now than it would otherwise be," he wrote.
However, Iran, is sponsoring militias in Iraq to terrorize Sunnis, complementing Russia's air power with ground forces in Syria, and arming Houthi rebels in Yemen. Teheran is still developing ballistic missiles, Hayden said, although they are relatively valueless without warheads.
Trump will find both parties supportive of his efforts, Hayden said. He said many lawmakers were not happy with the deal in the first place, and many are upset at Iran's actions in the region.
The new president should work with allies about the likelihood of Iran becoming a "threshold nuclear state" within 10 years. Hayden wrote Trump should not follow President Barack Obama’s methods of taking little action: "He shouldn't have to accept his predecessor's decision to concede that status to a messianic state that has shown no signs it has changed its ways."
Obama did not rebuke Iran because he was worried they would abandon the deal, however, Obama's assumption Iran would keep to the deal was "very ambitious—and optimistic," Hayden, the former CIA director, said.
The current director of the CIA, John Brennan, warned Trump scrapping the Iran deal would be "the height of folly."
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