Trump decertifies Iran deal
Move leaves Iran nuclear deal in place, but imposes additional sanctions
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Friday announced new restrictions on Iran, calling it “a terrorist nation like few others,” but he stopped short of scrapping the landmark nuclear deal that was the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievement.
Instead, the president urged Congress to consider reimposing sanctions if Iran crosses certain lines, such as firing ballistic missiles or financing terrorism. His decision, which followed what the administration said was a major review of the international deal, could put its future in jeopardy.
Trump said he would not certify that Iran was in compliance with the 2015 deal that blocked its nuclear program, though he had done so twice before under a law requiring the president’s certification every 90 days. In addition to asking Congress to threaten new sanctions, Trump moved to impose separate penalties by executive action, including blacklisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Iran’s elite military unit that is heavily involved in much of the country’s business and trade.
“We cannot and will not make this certification,” Trump said in a speech from the White House ahead of the next deadline for certification on Sunday.
If Congress, as well as the six major powers that are signatories to the deal, don’t take steps to satisfactorily improve it, Trump said, the United States will end its participation in the accord. Besides Iran and the United States, the parties to the agreement are the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China and the European Union.
“The longer we ignore a threat, the more dangerous it becomes,” Trump said. He called the government in Tehran a “rogue” and “fanatical regime” that has “spread chaos” around the world, and added, “The regime remains the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.”
Iran also violently represses its own citizens and fuels civil wars in countries like Yemen and Syria, Trump said.
The nuclear deal, however, was limited by the allies’ consensus to addressing the arms threat, not other Iranian activities.
Trump also complained that if the Obama administration had not entered into the deal, which gave Iran relief from sanctions in return for shuttering its nuclear program, Tehran’s economy would have collapsed.
Now, he said, “We will deny the regime all paths to a nuclear weapon.”
Trump’s statement that Iran was not in compliance contradicts the opinion not only of most world authorities — notably the United Nations watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, which conducts inspections in Iran — but also of the administration’s own top experts, including Defense Secretary James N. Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The president’s action threatened to further isolate Washington from its key allies and to give a boost to Iranian hard-liners who have opposed the deal from the start, like many American conservatives have. If Congress decides to reimpose the nuclear-related sanctions, a prospect far from clear, the U.S. will effectively withdraw from the agreement.
European allies had been lobbying the Trump administration not to abandon the nuclear deal; while they were chagrined by the decision, there was relief that the president did not “rip up” the accord as he’d vowed since his election campaign.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, said in Brussels, “It is not up to any single country to terminate” the accord. “We have (a) collective responsibility to protect a nuke deal that’s working,” she added.
The United Kingdom, France and Germany issued a joint statement to express their concern with the American action. “We stand committed to the (Iran agreement) and its full implementation by all sides,” they said.
Trump instructed the Treasury Department to declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization, saying it had provided weapons, money and fighters to numerous militant groups such a Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.