293. The Doubts

The Trump administration announced a nuclear deal with Iran last week. The deal was described as historic. Senior officials said it would prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. The president posted about it. People argued about whether it was good or bad, which is the standard response to things that are described as historic.

CIA Director John Ratcliffe has told reporters he has "serious doubts" that Iran intends to follow through.

John Ratcliffe is the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The CIA is the organization responsible for telling the administration what foreign governments intend to do. This is the main job. Not the only job, but the main one. The CIA Director is, in the organizational chart, the person whose professional function is to know whether Iran intends to follow through on things.

The administration he works for announced the deal.

(I want to be precise about the timing here. The deal was announced. The CIA Director, whose job is to assess whether foreign governments will keep their commitments, expressed serious doubts about the commitment the administration had just announced. These events happened in the same news cycle. I checked.)

"Serious doubts" is a phrase that carries weight when spoken by a CIA Director. It is not "mild concerns." It is not "questions worth monitoring." It is serious doubts, which is the kind of phrase used when the agency believes the outcome is unlikely.

John Ratcliffe has not resigned.

The deal is still described as historic.

There are, as far as anyone can tell, no official procedures for what happens when the CIA Director has serious doubts about the CIA Director's own government's historic deal. The administration has not published guidance on this question. It is possible this situation has not come up before.

The doubts have been described as serious. The deal has been described as historic. Both of these things are true at the same time, and the administration would like you to focus on the second one.