U.S. Army General Joseph Votel signaled on Tuesday support for the 2015 nuclear deal, saying “right now, I think it is in our interest” to stay in the deal.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out of the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). In his new policy declared on January 12, Trump gave Congress and European allies four months to fix what he claims “disastrous flaws” in the deal otherwise he will withdraw the U.S. from it.

“The JCPOA addresses one of the principle threats that we deal with from Iran, so if the JCPOA goes away, then we will have to have another way to deal with…,” General Votel said, according to Reuters. 

Votel is head of the U.S. military’s Central Command, which is responsible for the Middle East and Central Asia, including Iran. He was speaking to a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the same day that Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson after a series of public rifts over policy, including Iran.

Tillerson had joined Defense Secretary Jim Mattis in pressing a skeptical Trump to stick with the agreement with Iran.

“There would be some concern (in the region), I think, about how we intended to address that particular threat if it was not being addressed through the JCPOA. ... Right now, I think it is in our interest” to stay in the deal, Votel said.

When a lawmaker asked whether he agreed with Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford’s position on the deal, Votel said: “Yes, I share their position.”

Mattis said late last year that the United States should consider staying in the Iran nuclear deal unless it was proven Tehran was not complying or that the agreement was not in the U.S. national interest.

A collapse of the Iran nuclear deal would be a “great loss,” the United Nations atomic watchdog’s chief Yukio Amano warned Trump recently, giving a wide-ranging defense of the accord.

Iran has stayed within the deal’s restrictions since Trump took office but has fired diplomatic warning shots at Washington in recent weeks. It said on Monday that it could rapidly enrich uranium to a higher degree of purity if the deal collapsed.

Iran, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council - the U.S., UK, France, Russia, and China - Germany and the European Union struck the nuclear deal on July 14, 2015.

According the JCPOA, Iran is tasked to scale back its nuclear activities in exchange for termination of economic and financial sanctions.

Since the JCPOA went into force in January 2016, the International Atomic Energy Agency has issued ten reports each time confirming Tehran’s complete compliance with the multilateral agreement.

The multilateral agreement has been approved by the UN Security Council.

NA/PA