Biden Reviving Iran Deal ‘Deeply Problematic,’ Former Cheney Adviser Says

President-elect Joe Biden would be “wise” to use President Trump’s groundwork in the Middle East instead of ripping it up, former Vice President Dick Cheney’s national security adviser John Hannah told FOX Business on Wednesday.

Responding to reports Biden might reverse Trump’s decision to undo the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal, Hannah called it “deeply problematic on a number of fronts.”

The senior counselor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told host Neil Cavuto it will be hard to even get the Iranians back to the table for a deal.

“Everything the Iranians are talking about now is they’re going to drive a very, very hard bargain,” Hannah said. “They’re not only going to demand that America surrender all of its sanctions, but that America compensates it for damage done to the Iranian economy over the last several years.”

On Sunday, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani called on Biden to “compensate for past mistakes” and return the U.S. to Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers, according to a state-run news agency.

“It’s fine if the vice president wants to get back into negotiations with Iran, but he’s been gifted by Donald Trump an unbelievable amount of economic leverage over the Iranian economy. They are in deep, deep trouble, and to simply return to the status quo of the Obama administration, surrender all of that simply to return to a deal, that in a space of a very few years is going to run out and allow Iran to surge forward with an industrial-strength nuclear program doesn’t make a lot of sense to me,” Hannah explained.

Trump has brokered three peace deals in the last few months after pulling out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in his second year in office and began imposing crushing economic sanctions on Tehran.

To watch interview with John Hannah click here

The Associated Press contributed to this report.