| Hello FOIA Files readers! This week, I dug out a cache of records I obtained from the State Department about President Donald Trump’s policy toward Iran during his first term. I haven’t written about these documents before because Trump was long gone by the time the State Department finished turning them over to me. But now, since he authorized airstrikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities last weekend, I thought it would be worth reexamining the trove. If you’re not already getting FOIA Files in your inbox, sign up here. Trump has long positioned himself as an antiwar president. That’s why his decision to involve the US in Israel’s war against Iran divided his base and led at least one Republican member of congress to call the operation unconstitutional. Arguably, last weekend's military action can be traced to 2017 when senior administration officials began laying the groundwork for withdrawing from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, better known as the Iran nuclear deal. The historic multilateral agreement, negotiated during President Barack Obama’s tenure in office, was signed on July 14, 2015 between Iran, the US, UK, France, China, Russia and Germany. The pact called for the US and other countries to lift sanctions against Iran in exchange for curtailed nuclear production. Trump hated it. On the 2015 and 2016 campaign trail he said it was “the worst deal ever negotiated” and could lead to a “nuclear holocaust.” In October 2017, Trump formally disavowed the deal and refused to recertify it unless it was amended. Trump said at the time that Iran was “not living up to the spirit of the deal.” Talking points and ‘good faith’ | I had learned that during the first few months of the first Trump administration, a State Department official named Brian Hook was one of the key figures working behind-the-scenes on the administration’s policies related to the Iran nuclear deal. (Hook, who was appointed by then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in 2017 to head the Office of Policy, Planning and Resources, was later tapped by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to head the Iran Policy Group.) Curious about what the discussions entailed, in 2018 I filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the State Department for all of Hook’s emails as well as memos, reports, letters, notes, you name it. I also requested the same types of records for Tillerson’s then-chief of staff, Margaret Peterlin. I sued to compel release of the documents a few months later. Over the course of six years, the agency turned over more than 2,000 pages. There’s some 80 pages of documents that center on the administration’s discussions about its new Iran strategy. Reviewing the records now, it’s dizzying to see the entire chain of events: All the planning that went into the administration’s refusal to certify the nuclear deal, followed by the later withdrawal from it, which in turn led Iran to restart some of its nuclear programs, which eight years later underpinned Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities with bunker-busting bombs. The documents show that some longtime State Department officials were eager to see Trump poke holes in the nuclear deal. In September 2017 Hook’s deputy, Edward Lacey, emailed Hook a press release that named more than 80 nonproliferation experts that backed the Iran deal, along with a dismissive remark. “FYI: For the most part these are the ‘usual suspects’ – i.e. Obama Administration officials, the arms control-at-any-cost-crowd, etc,” Lacey wrote. As State Department officials worked to outline the administration’s rationale for disavowing the nuclear deal, they scrutinized a copy of the 2015 agreement. One copy I obtained had some handwritten notes scribbled at the bottom of one page. The word “Options” is underlined. Below that it says, “anytime, anywhere inspections is the standard” with the International Atomic Energy Agency. “Not contained in this deal.” On another page, two words were circled: “good faith.” I wasn’t able to figure out the identity of the official who marked up the document. Those notes appear to have partially informed a set of lengthy talking points the State Department and the National Security Council prepared prior to Trump’s October 2017 formal decision to not re-certify the nuclear deal. The talking points include a wide-range of justifications for abandoning the agreement, such as human rights abuses and Iran’s support for Yemen’s Houthi rebels, which the Trump administration bombed earlier this year. US allies said it was a mistake to entangle other issues with the nuclear deal. A couple of bullet points indicate that the Trump administration planned for a fight. Along with the talking points, the State Department and NSC also prepared a lengthy list of potential questions they expected to be asked. The suggested responses to each question were completely redacted. Some of the anticipated questions are similar to those Trump and his appointees were queried about over the past month. Once Trump declined to recertify the nuclear deal, foreign policy hawks and think tanks bombarded Hook and other State Department officials with emails and lobbied for an even more aggressive action, including scrapping the deal altogether. Seven months later, Trump withdrew the US from the nuclear pact and reimposed sanctions on the country. Iran then steadily ramped up its nuclear enrichment program. Fast forward to March, when Trump sent a letter to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urging him to return to the table and negotiate a new agreement to end its nuclear enrichment program. “I hope you’re going to negotiate,” Trump said he wrote, according to an interview he gave Fox News. “Because if we have to go in militarily it’s going to be a terrible thing for them.” *Note: FOIA Files is taking a break for the next couple of weeks. We’ll return on July 18. Got a tip for a document you think I should request via FOIA? Do you have details to share about the state of FOIA under the Trump administration? Send me an email: jleopold15@bloomberg.net or jasonleopold@protonmail.com. Or send me a secure message on Signal: @JasonLeopold.666. | 
