Photo courtesy of Martha Stewart for Harvard’s Institute of Politics CIA director attacks critics of Iran deal as 'wholly disingenuous'

CIA Director John Brennan reportedly says the preliminary framework around the nuclear deal with Iran does what had once seemed impossible, calling some critics of the agreement “wholly disingenuous” and expressing surprise at the Iranians’ concessions.

“I must tell you the individuals who say this deal provides a pathway for Iran to a bomb are being wholly disingenuous, in my view, if they know the facts, understand what’s required for a program,” Brennan told an audience at Harvard University’s Institute of Politics on Tuesday night in his first comments since the outline was announced last week in Lausanne, Switzerland, according to Agence France-Presse.

Brennan said that while critics worry that lifting sanctions on Iran will “cause more trouble throughout the area,” the framework is “as solid as you can get” when it comes to blunting the Islamic Republic’s efforts to build nuclear weapons.

“I certainly am pleasantly surprised that the Iranians have agreed to so much here,” Brennan said, according to AFP, ticking through the specifics of the deal.

“In terms of the inspections regime, the reduction as far as the centrifuges, the stockpile, what they’re doing with the Arak reactor — all of that I think is really quite surprising and quite good,” he said.

The agreement reached last week in Lausanne would remove all nuclear sanctions on Iran in exchange for its compliance with reducing the number of its centrifuges by two-thirds for 10 years, as well as agreeing not to enrich uranium above 3.67 percent over the same period.

Brennan said that attitudes changed within Iran because of sanctions that profoundly hurt the country’s economy, but it remains to be seen whether President Hassan Rouhani’s pragmatism with the nuclear talks would translate to other parts of the country’s foreign policy.

“I think we’ll see. But I don’t think this is going to lead to a light switch when all of a sudden the Iranians are going to become passive, docile in the region, no,” he said.

If the talks had failed, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could have blamed Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif for the outcome, Brennan added.