Clashing views on Iran reflect new balance of power

WASHINGTON — Five days before President Donald 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 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

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