Trump may seek to toughen Iranian nuclear pact
President Donald Trump is seeking to reopen the nuclear agreement with Iran to toughen its provisions rather than scrap it right away as he has threatened, using his visit to the United Nations this week to enlist support from allies to pressure Tehran to return to the negotiating table, administration officials said Wednesday.
Trump, who denounced the agreement in a speech to the U.N. General Assembly this week as an “embarrassment to the United States,” wants to modify it by extending its time frame and imposing new limits on Iran’s development of ballistic missiles. Although European officials strongly back the deal, some signaled openness to negotiating a separate follow-up agreement.
The maneuvering suggested a possible path forward for Trump short of abandoning the accord, but it remains uncertain whether he can reach consensus with the European allies, much less with Russia and China, the deal’s other patrons.
Even if he succeeded, persuading Tehran to reopen talks would be a challenge. President Hassan Rouhani of Iran declared the agreement a “closed issue” on Wednesday, warning that if the United States pulled out, Iran could resume uranium enrichment.
“We see today the Americans are seeking an excuse to break this agreement,” Rouhani said at a news conference after his own speech to the General Assembly. For that reason, he said, negotiating with “an American government that tramples on a legal agreement would be a waste of time.”
Under the accord, reached in 2015, Iran agreed to curb its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of international sanctions. Under U.S. law, Trump has until Oct. 15 to certify whether Iran is complying, and while he has done so twice since taking office, he has signaled that he will refuse to do so again.
That by itself would not abrogate the deal, but would give Congress 60 days to reimpose sanctions on Iran, an action that would mean an end to the agreement, at least for the United States.
Trump may see decertification, or the threat of it, as leverage to press Iran and the other powers to restart talks. He could offer to certify for another 90 days if other parties agreed to explore new negotiations.
The other five major powers that negotiated the agreement along with President Barack Obama — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — have resisted any effort by Trump to simply tear it up.
If the U.S. decides to break the agreement, Rouhani said, “any choice and any option” are open for Iran — but he dismissed Trump’s “baseless accusation” that the nuclear deal may be providing cover for Iran’s eventual construction of nuclear weapons.
“The option that we say we have at our disposal … will never be going toward nuclear weapons,” Rouhani said. “Iran has never sought nuclear weapons, will never seek nuclear weapons, is not now seeking nuclear weapons.”
“Iran has never sought nuclear weapons, will never seek nuclear weapons, is not now seeking nuclear weapons.” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani