Elbridge Colby, the nominee to be the Pentagon’s undersecretary for policy, appears to be on track to pass a crucial hurdle toward confirmation in spite of strong GOP concerns earlier in his confirmation process about his dovish past views on Iran, among other issues.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has not yet scheduled a vote to advance Colby’s nomination to the full Senate, due to outstanding paperwork that the committee has not yet received, Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told Jewish Insider on Thursday. But multiple committee members told JI they expect him to move successfully through the committee.

A Republican senator on the committee told JI on Thursday they believe Colby is on track to clear the committee and is not aware of lingering issues. Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK), a committee member, also told JI, “we’re good.”

Another Senate Republican said that they believe Colby had done enough during his confirmation hearing and private conversations to assuage concerns from skeptical Senate Republicans concerned about his past views on Iran and other policy areas, as well as to distance himself from other controversial Pentagon hires.

“Speaking for me, he did answer things the way he needed to answer them, adequate at least to my satisfaction,” the senator said. “He has said the things he needed to say to the satisfaction of people who like me and maybe others — I can’t speak for any of them … and he was pretty convincing.”

Colby walked back his past views at his hearing, saying that a nuclear Iran would be an “existential danger” to the United States and that he would provide the administration with military options to prevent such an outcome. He also said his past comments had been intended to push back on what he viewed as an overly hawkish public consensus at the time.

He also distanced himself from Michael DiMino, the dovish deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East.

The senator described Colby as indisputably sharp and smart, and added that Colby’s past comments should be taken in the context of his previous role as “an opiner” rather than a “policy guy.”

Asked if he plans to support Colby, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD), a hawkish Republican on Armed Services, told JI, “I think we’re moving forward at this stage in the game.”

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), who also serves on Armed Services, told JI after Colby’s confirmation hearing that she had concerns about what she described as his “bait and switch” on his positions on Iran. She had questioned Colby at his hearing about his calls for the U.S. to prioritize China and the IndoPacific over other regions and reduce its presence elsewhere.

“He literally told all of us there — and you saw that Chairman Wicker was trying to get him to answer my question — that he will focus on one country and ignore the others,” Rosen said. “Well, I can tell you, you have a home, and you tell the burglars, ‘I’m only going to lock the front door, but I don’t have the resources to lock the other doors or windows in my house.’ Do you think they’re just going to go away? They’re not. And so I don’t believe that he is forward-thinking enough to do this job, and I think Chairman Wicker agrees with me on that.”