Trump decertifies Iran deal, sends it to Congress
Invites cautious rebuke from deal partners French President plans meeting Rouhani
Washington, US - US President Donald Trump has sent the fate of the landmark Iran nuclear deal to the US Congress, ignoring the advice of worried allies as he vowed to confront the ‘fanatical regime’ in Tehran.
Trump defended his decision to ‘ decertify’ Iran’s compliance with the 2015 agreement in a speech on Friday that evoked US grievances dating back to the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
He warned he could rip up the 2015 agreement curbing Iran’s nuclear program ‘at any time’. Reaction to the US move came fast and furious, with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declaring the US was ‘more than ever against the Iranian people’.
Former US secretary of state John Kerry, who negotiated the nuclear deal, accused Trump of ‘creating an international crisis’ and called on the US Congress to stand in the President’s way.
In a cautious but unmistakable rebuke, the leaders of Britain, France and Germany said the deal remained in ‘our shared national security interest’.
French President Emmanuel Macron later said he was considering visiting Iran after speaking by phone with his Iranian counterpart. The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, which was awarded this year’s Nobel Peace Prize said the move, makes proliferation more likely.
Trump stopped short of scrap- ping the deal outright, however, leaving Congress and US allies some room for manoeuvre.
The Republican-controlled Congress now has 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran.
“However, in the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be termi- nated,” Trump said, in a televised address from the Diplomatic Room of the White House.
Proposals by Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Bob Corker to introduce ‘trigger points’ for new sanctions and extend sanctions beyond a pre-agreed deadline have spooked allies, who believe it could breach the accord.
But it remains unclear if their proposals can garner the 60 votes need to pass the Senate.
Trump also backed away from designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as a terror group, a move that would have triggered sanctions and almost certain Iranian retribution. “We have considered that there are particular risks and complexities to designating an entire army, so to speak, of a country,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said.
Instead, the US Treasury said it had taken action against the Revolutionary Guards under a 2001 executive order to hit sources of terror funding and added four companies that allegedly support the group to its sanctions list.
Trump claimed support for his move in a tweet late Friday, while suggesting that his critics among US allies were placing trade profits ahead of security.
‘Many people talking, with much agreement, on my Iran speech today. Participants in the deal are making lots of money on trade with Iran!’ he tweeted.