Former CIA Director Michael Hayden told Newsmax on Tuesday that President Donald Trump decision to leave the Iran nuclear agreement could jeopardize his upcoming summit with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
"The president wants to be able to make a deal with North Korea — and he says it will be a hard-edged deal," Hayden, who also directed the NSA, told Newsmax in an exclusive interview.
"But North Korea could conclude that it doesn't matter what we agree to with Trump, because the Americans won't stand by it.
"It could change with the next election — or it could change with President Trump."
Trump made good on a longstanding campaign promise Tuesday and signed a presidential memorandum reimposing crippling sanctions on Iran that had been waived under the 2015 agreement.
The president faced a May 12 deadline set by U.S. law to decide whether to continue the nuclear deal, which also included Germany, France, Britain, China, and Russia.
The accord, considered Democratic President Barack Obama's primary diplomatic achievement, immediately infused $1.7 billion into Tehran's government — mostly in cash.
Hayden, 73, a retired four-star Air Force general, told Newsmax that Trump left the accord solely because "it was President Obama's deal."
"The Iranians have upheld their end of the deal."
He noted Trump's own Director of National Intelligence Dan Coates had told Congress that "Iran is further from a nuclear weapon under this agreement that they would have been without it.
"We know more about Iran with the deal than without it.
"The American intelligence community has concluded that Iran has not violated the agreement."
In his speech to the nation announcing his decision, President Trump cited Israeli intelligence that Iran had developed a nuclear weapons plan that could be activated at any time.
Hayden called the information, presented last week by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "old news."
"Everything in that cache of documents has everything to do with the early 2000s," he told Newsmax.
He said the documents were from 2007, showing Tehran had a nuclear program in 2003 — "and they stopped it," though Iran disclosed nothing about their activities in the nearly two years of global negotiations leading up to the agreement.
"They lied," Hayden said. "We knew they lied.
"We've always known that the Iranians lied."
Hayden also made this observation about Trump's speech: "When the president seemed to suggest that his decision was based on Israeli intelligence, the only intelligence he referred to was Israeli —not American.
"All that information was from 10 years ago," the retired general said. "It was not since the deal was signed.
"Even Netanyahu didn't claim that."
Still, the nuclear deal is not perfect, Hayden insisted to Newsmax.
"Yes, I think it's flawed. There was a bait-and-switch in how Secretary Kerry presented the deal to us," he added, referring to Obama Secretary of State John Kerry.
"But it should not be the rationale for us to pull out of the deal.
"This is the president" Hayden said. "This is not the Department of Defense. This is not the State Department. This is not the CIA.
"They're not saying that we have to get out because the Iranians are cheating.
"This is the president."
Perhaps most important, Hayden said, President Trump's decision puts the U.S. "in confrontation with Britain, France, and Germany.
"All of them were against our leaving the deal.
"I think," Hayden predicted to Newsmax, "the Iranians are going to sit it out and let us fight with the Europeans."
© 2024 Newsmax. All rights reserved.