Trump stops short of killing nuke deal
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday angrily accused Iran of violating the spirit of the landmark 2015 nuclear deal, blaming it for a litany of malign behaviour and hitting its main military wing with anti-terrorism sanctions. But Trump, breaking with a campaign pledge to rip up the agreement, said he was not yet ready to pull the U.S. out or re-impose nuclear sanctions.
Instead, he kicked the issue to Congress and the other nations in the seven-country accord, telling lawmakers to toughen the law that governs U.S. participation and to fix a series of deficiencies in the agreement. Those include the expiration of several key restrictions under “sunset provisions” that begin to kick in in 2025, he said.
Trump warned that without the fixes, he would likely pull the U.S. out of the deal and snap previously lifted sanctions back into place.
“It is under continuous review, and our participation can be cancelled by me as president at any time,” he said in a speech from the White House.
Trump’s announcement was essentially a compromise that allows him to condemn an accord that he has repeatedly denounced as the worst deal in American history.
But he stopped well short of torpedoing the pact, which was negotiated over 18 months by the Obama administration, European allies and others.
Congress will now have 60 days to decide whether to put the accord’s previous sanctions back into place, modify them or do nothing. Any decision to reimpose sanctions would automatically kill America’s participation in the deal.
Ahead of Trump’s speech, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and other U.S. officials offered details of the president’s new stance. Tillerson said Trump will ask lawmakers to come up with legislation that would automatically reimpose sanctions that were lifted under the deal should Iran cross any one of numerous nuclear and non-nuclear “trigger points.”
Those “trigger points” would include violations of the deal involving illicit atomic work or ballistic missile testing, support for Syrian President Bashar Assad, Lebanon’s Hezbollah movement and other groups that destabilize the region, human rights abuses and cyber warfare, Tillerson said.