If `iat` is provided, but the value is `null` (or `None` once deserialized), a `TypeError` is raised instead of a `JWTClaimsError`. I think the following piece of code should handle `TypeError` as well as `ValueError`: https://github.com/mpdavis/python-jose/blob/58e543ea5ea225961e43e9cc2781165748478a0f/jose/jwt.py#L256