Article snippet: Shortly after President Rex Tillerson. Trump wants to replace Tillerson with current CIA director Mike Pompeo, a fierce critic of the Defense Secretary James Mattis told Congress last October that it's in America's national security interest to keep the agreement. "If we can confirm that Iran is living by the agreement, if we can determine that this is in our best interest, then clearly, we should stay with it," Mattis said. "I believe, at this point in time, absent indications to the contrary, it is something the president should consider staying with." Trump, in contrast, has repeatedly called it one of the "worst deals" in U.S. history, and in January threatened to withdraw the U.S. unless European allies worked with the administration to sanction Iran's ballistic missile program and combat its other "malign" behavior. Mattis' view backs up those of his top generals, including the head of U.S. Central Command, who told senators on Tuesday that the deal is in America's national security interests, saying it "addresses one of the principal threats that we deal with from Iran." Gen. Joseph Votel added that if the agreement goes away, the U.S. will need "another way" to deal with Iran's nuclear weapons. In September, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Joseph Dunford, told Congress that the intelligence community's assessment was that Iran was in compliance with the deal, and therefore the U.S. should "focus on addressing the other chal... Link to the full article to read more