US reentering Iran nuclear deal would make Middle East 'less secure': Pompeo

Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday that the US re-entering the Iran nuclear deal would make the Middle East 'less secure.'

According to The Hill, Pompeo defended the work that the former President Donald Trump's administration did with Iran, stating that the U.S had made progress during an interview with John Catsimatidis on his radio show on WABC 770 AM. The former top US diplomat noted that however, that the administration wasn't able to get a deal that it felt would prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon.

"The Irans understand strength. They understand power. They understand resolve. We demonstrated that. And when we did, the Irans backed down," Pompeo said, as reported by The Hill.

"We didn't get all the way to where we would've hoped we could get in respect to getting Iran to stand down and enter an agreement that would've actually avoided them having a nuclear weapon, but we made an awful lot of progress," he added.

The former President withdrew from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in 2018 and imposed sanctions on the Middle Eastern country.

President Joe Biden has said he would rejoin the deal if Iran came back into compliance regarding limits on stockpiling and enriching urum. His goal is to build a "longer and stronger" agreement once both nations have reentered the agreement.

Pompeo said that doing so would put the entire region in jeopardy.

"If this Administration unwinds that and goes back to the crappy deal that we had with Iran when President Obama was in office, America will be less secure," he said. "Israel will be less secure. The Middle East will be less secure. And the entire region will be less stable."

The Hill further reported that a bipartisan group of 140 lower house lawmakers in the US Congress sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken asking him to take a "comprehensive" approach to the threats posed by Iran before re-joining the deal.

( With inputs from ANI )