WASHINGTON — Five days before President Trump pulled out of what he called the “horrible’’ Iran nuclear deal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told diplomats from Britain, France, and Germany that he believed the pact could still be saved.
If Pompeo could win a few more days for negotiations, he told the Europeans in a conference call May 4, there was a chance — however small — the two sides could bridge a gap over the agreement’s “sunset provisions,’’ under which restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program expire in anywhere from seven to 13 years.
By May 7, when Britain’s foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, made the rounds in Washington, that hope had vanished. Pompeo told him that not only had Trump decided to pull out of the deal brokered by his predecessor, Barack Obama, but he was also going to reimpose the harshest set of sanctions on Iran he could.
The frantic final days before Trump’s announcement demonstrate that the Iran deal remained a complicated, divisive issue inside the White House, even after the president restocked his war Cabinet with more hawkish figures like Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the new national security adviser.
How that debate unfolded offers an insight into the shifting balance of power on Trump’s national security team in his second year in office.
Bolton is emerging as an influential figure, with a clear channel to the president and an ability to control the voices he hears. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who opposed leaving the deal but did not push the case as vocally toward the end, appears more isolated.
Pompeo may play a swing role, a hard-line former congressman and CIA director who, in his new job, seems determined to give diplomacy a fair shot.
Beyond the bureaucratic maneuvering, analysts said, the Iran debate lays bare a deeper split on Trump’s team — between those like Mattis who want to change the behavior of hostile governments, and those like Bolton who want to change the governments themselves.
“Since 9/11, there has been a persisting policy tension over whether the US objective toward ‘rogue’ states should be regime change or behavior change,’’ said Robert S. Litwak, senior vice president and director of international security studies at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars.
Those in the regime change camp, Litwak said, believe that changing behavior, either through sanctions or military pressure, is inadequate because the threat comes from the very character of the regimes.
For more than a decade, and as recently as the summer, Bolton advocated “the overthrow of the mullahs’ regime in Tehran.’’ On Friday, he told Voice of America that leadership change was “not the objective of the administration.’’
Trump’s Cabinet was hardly dovish before Bolton’s arrival. Mattis, in particular, nursed a grudge against Iran that dates to his days as a Marine commander.
But he was opposed to leaving the deal, two people close to him said, because he feared that a trans-Atlantic rift over Iran would weaken the NATO alliance and could complicate looming negotiations with North Korea.
Even if Mattis had wanted to fight for the deal, it is not clear how much he would have been heard. Bolton, officials said, never convened a high-level meeting of the National Security Council to air the debate. He advised Trump in smaller sessions, otherwise keeping the door to his West Wing office closed.
Bolton has forged a comfortable relationship with the president, several people said, channeling his America First vocabulary.
When the president addressed the nation Tuesday afternoon, his words bore the imprint of Bolton, who had called for the agreement to be scrapped almost from the moment it was signed.
“I don’t really have much to add to the president’s speech,’’ a pleased Bolton told reporters afterward in the White House briefing room. “This deal was fundamentally flawed. It does not do what it purports to do. It does not prevent Iran from developing deliverable nuclear weapons.’’
As Bolton consolidates power, Mattis finds himself in a lonelier position. He lost the alliance he had built with Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex Tillerson, who joined him in persuading the president not to rip up the pact on two previous occasions.
Bolton’s predecessor, Lieutenant General H.R. McMaster, also argued in favor of preserving the deal.
In future such debates, Pompeo may end up standing somewhere between Mattis and Bolton. While in Congress, he regularly called for the Iran deal to be scrapped. And as CIA director, he spoke over the summer about the benefits of changing the North Korean government — a stance he has since disavowed.
But as secretary of state, Pompeo impressed European diplomats with his willingness to keep negotiating fixes to the deal, even given Trump’s obvious hostility.
