The State Department pushed back after Wendy Sherman criticized Trump’s Iran policy, reviving a fight over the 2015 nuclear deal and pressure on Tehran.
The State Department sharply rebuked former senior diplomat Wendy Sherman after she criticized President Donald Trump’s Iran strategy, turning a policy dispute over Tehran into a public clash over the legacy of the Obama-era nuclear deal.
Sherman, who helped lead the Obama administration’s negotiations on the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and later served as deputy secretary of state under President Joe Biden, faulted Trump’s approach in recent interviews. In a Bloomberg interview quoted by Fox News Digital, she said Trump “doesn’t have a strategy” and described him as “very tactical” and “very transactional.”
The dispute comes as Trump’s administration is relying on pressure against Iran, including sanctions and a U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, according to the Fox report. The broader stakes include whether Washington can force Tehran toward a nuclear agreement while avoiding a wider conflict.
State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott responded forcefully, telling Fox News Digital that Sherman “was literally part of the team that handed the Iranian regime billions of dollars and a roadmap to a nuclear weapon.” Pigott added: “She has no credibility.”
Pigott also defended Trump’s record, saying that under the previous administration “wars broke out, and our enemies grew stronger,” while under Trump “historic peace deals have been signed” and “the Iranian regime will never obtain a nuclear weapon.” Those claims reflect the administration’s position and were not independently assessed in the report.
The clash reaches back to the 2015 nuclear accord, which Trump withdrew from in 2018. The agreement has remained a central point of disagreement between Trump’s allies, who argue it empowered Tehran, and former Obama administration officials, who have defended diplomacy as the best way to constrain Iran’s nuclear program.
Sherman also criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the interview, accusing him and the United States of helping create what she called “a genocide in Gaza.” Fox reported that she did not provide evidence for that claim in the interview excerpt it cited.
A representative for Sherman, Solveig Reeker, declined to respond to the criticism when contacted by Fox News Digital, saying Sherman was not available.
For now, the exchange leaves the central policy dispute unresolved: whether the Trump administration’s pressure campaign can produce a nuclear deal with Iran, or whether critics such as Sherman will gain traction in warning that the approach is too tactical and too risky.
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