Former National Security Adviser McMaster to Biden: return to Iran nuclear deal 'big mistake'

Former National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster says Democrat Joe Biden, if certified as president, should not rejoin the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

"It would be a really big mistake to turn the clock back to 2016 and resurrect the nuclear deal," McMaster told Fox News on Wednesday. "The Iran nuclear deal was a political disaster masquerading as a diplomatic triumph."

The Obama administration, in which Biden was vice president, led the international deal in which the U.S. and five other countries agreed to lift economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for the rogue nation winding down its development of a nuclear weapon.

President Trump, after taking office in 2017, withdrew the U.S. from the deal, arguing that Iran was not fulfilling its end of the deal.  

"These big payoffs to Iran when the deal was signed, as well as the relief of sanctions ... what did they do with that money?" McMaster asked rhetorically. "They applied that money to intensify sectarian violence across the region in an effort to put a proxy army on the border of Israel."