Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette
Tillerson calls Iran deal a failure
Still, he certifies Tehran abiding
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Rex Tillerson declared the Iran nuclear deal a failure on Wednesday but left open the possibility the Trump administration will uphold it nonetheless.
The top American diplomat sought to reinforce the notion that the U.S. is aggressively countering Iran’s destabilizing behavior throughout the Middle East, even though President Donald Trump so far has
not pulled out of the deal. Tillerson spoke a day after certifying to Congress that Iran is complying with its obligations under the 2015 deal, a finding required by law every 90 days for Tehran to continue receiving relief from nuclear sanctions.
The certification was delivered just 90 minutes before a midnight Eastern time deadline and with a headline in a news release announcing “Iran Continues to Sponsor Terrorism.”
In the letter sent late Tuesday to House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., that made the certification, Tillerson said the administration has undertaken a full review of the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
“Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror, through many platforms and methods,” Tillerson wrote. He said the National Security Council-led interagency review of the agreement will evaluate whether it “is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
Despite the sanctions relief, Iran remains on the State Department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism for its support of anti-Israel groups and is still subject to non-nuclear sanctions, including for human-rights abuses and for its backing of Syrian President Bashar Assad.
“The JCPOA fails to achieve the objective of a non-nuclear Iran,” Tillerson said Wednesday, using the initials of the 2015 nuclear deal’s name. “It only delays their goal of becoming a nuclear state.”
He said the deal, brokered by former President Barack Obama’s administration along with other world powers, represented the “same failed approach” the U.S. has taken to North Korea. As with North Korea, Tillerson said, the Trump administration was unwilling to be patient with Iran, ticking through a list of countries where he said Iran was supporting terrorism and violence.
Tillerson criticized Iran for its hostility toward Israel, its sponsorship of Houthi rebels in Yemen, its backing of Assad, the harassment of U.S. naval vessels plying the Persian Gulf, and cyberattacks against the United States and its allies in the Gulf.
“Iran spends its treasure and time disrupting peace,” he said.
“The evidence is clear — Iran’s provocative actions threaten the United States, the region and the world,” Tillerson said. He said one of the mistakes of the deal was how it “completely ignored” other threats posed by Iran.
Proponents of the deal have long acknowledged it doesn’t address concerns about Iran’s non-nuclear behavior, such as its ballistic missile program or support for the Houthis. Obama and others argued that it was narrowly tailored to take the most dangerous prospect — a nuclear-armed Iran — off the table.
The deal’s critics, though, say it fails to achieve even that goal because key restrictions on Iran’s nuclear development end after a decade or more. With some of those critics now in office, Tillerson’s comments Wednesday marked the first time that position has been echoed by the U.S. government.
Opponents of the agreement have called for renegotiating the accord with the goal of making permanent its 15-year moratorium on uranium enrichment close to the level needed to make a bomb. But reimposing sanctions that were explicitly tied to Iran’s nuclear program — as Tillerson suggested in his announcement — would face particular opposition from European allies and give the government in Tehran grounds to walk away from the accord.
Iran has denied even considering the development of nuclear weapons.
Under the international agreement, Iran is allowed to enrich and store some uranium for energy production, although it had to reduce its uranium stockpile by 96 percent, idle many of its enrichment centrifuges and pour concrete into its heavy-water nuclear reactor. The Obama administration insisted that the provisions would slow the time it would take Iran to produce nuclear weapons.
COMPETING VIEWS ON DEAL
Tillerson’s statement before cameras at the State Department reflected the competing forces pulling at the Trump administration as it develops its policy toward Iran.
Trump as a candidate vowed to discard or renegotiate the pact, and shortly after taking office his administration put Tehran “on notice” that what the U.S. regards as troublesome behavior would no longer be tolerated. But neither Iran nor the other world powers that negotiated the agreement have any interest in reopening the deal, and U.S. companies stand to lose billions if the deal is scuttled.
Still, since taking office, Trump has stopped promising he’ll gut the deal. Tillerson said that decision will be made as part of a governmentwide review of Iran policy currently underway.
“The Trump administration has no intention of passing the buck to a future administration on Iran,” Tillerson said.
With Iran getting most of its benefits upfront, even critics of the agreement have said the United States gains little by breaking the deal now. Iran has complained that sanctions relief never gave it the economic boost it craved, and it has blamed the United States for not doing enough to allow U.S. businesses and banks to set up shop in Iran.
“The deal is working, and there’s absolutely no reason to pull away from it,” Barbara Slavin, acting director of the Future of Iran Initiative at the Atlantic Council in Washington, said in an interview Wednesday. “The U.S. would be isolated from the rest of the world. Iran is abiding by it.”
She said the review was a fig leaf to cover a decision by the Trump administration to abide by the Iran accord, if grudgingly. “Every administration, when it doesn’t know what the hell to do, reviews things,” Slavin said.
Tillerson also linked Iran’s behavior to that of North Korea and said that with both countries, the U.S. would no longer engage in “strategic patience.” The U.S. has been exploring ways to address the threat of North Korea’s nuclear program, which is significantly farther along than Iran’s.
“An unchecked Iran has the potential to travel the same path as North Korea — and to take the world along with it,” Tillerson said.
Congress has introduced bills extending U. S. sanctions against Iran related to its alleged support of terrorism, human-rights violations and missile tests. Lawmakers have put the legislation on pause, however, because of the impact the bills could have in Iran’s presidential election scheduled for next month. President Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate who pressed for the deal against domestic opposition, is seeking re-election. In addition, the U.S. Treasury has announced sanctions against individuals and companies affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.