Hayden: US Has ‘Accepted Iranian Uranium Enrichment’

FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2008, photo, then CIA Director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, testifies about world threats before a Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. For years, top officials of the Bush... FILE - In this Feb. 5, 2008, photo, then CIA Director, Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden, testifies about world threats before a Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill in Washington. For years, top officials of the Bush and Obama administrations dismissed fears about secret government data-mining by reassuring Congress that there were no secret nets trawling for Americans' phone and Internet records, no hidden vacuuming of personal information. "We do not vacuum up the contents of communications under the president's program and then use some sort of magic after the intercept to determine which of those we want to listen to, deal with or report on," Hayden told a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in July 2006. (AP Photo/Kevin Wolf, File) MORE LESS
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Gen. Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and the National Security Agency, said on Sunday that while he is willing to give the preliminary Iran nuclear deal a chance, the agreement leaves the country able to enrich uranium.

“I’m willing to let this deal kind of run,” he said on “Fox News Sunday.” “But let’s be honest with ourselves, all right. We have accepted Iranian uranium enrichment. There is no question about that. That’s a different red line than we used to have.”

Hayden said that the U.S. needs to push for a complete end to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

“At the end of the day, Iran’s going to be a nuclear threshold state. Now, before you think that’s condemnatory of what’s going on, what we have to do is to push that threshold back as far as possible, and that will identify — that would define whether this was a good idea, or a bad idea,” he said. “Right now, the Iranians are far too close to a nuclear weapon. We have hit the pause button. Now we have got to negotiate hitting the delete button with them.”

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