U.S. taking skeptical look at Iran accord
Officials emphasize country’s ‘mischief,’ terror sponsorship
WASHINGTON — A skeptical Trump administration has confirmed that Iran continues to comply with the 2015 nuclear disarmament deal but says the White House is conducting an internal review of the landmark arms control accord that President Donald Trump once called “the worst deal ever.”
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said in a letter to Congress that the National Security Council will lead an inter-agency review of whether easing economic sanctions against Iran as part of the accord “is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
“Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods,” Tillerson wrote.
The Treasury Department still maintains Obama administration sanctions aimed at Tehran’s support for terrorist groups and its ballistic missile program, and those conceivably could be adjusted. But any moves to impose major new penalties could undermine the accord and spur a new nuclear crisis in the Middle East.
The review also could recommend more subtle ways to apply pressure to Tehran, which actively supports Hezbollah, based in Lebanon, and Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also supports Houthi fighters in Yemen and Bashar Assad’s military in Syria. The U.S. opposes all of those groups.
The review comes as the White House has scrambled to balance the threat of direct military action and the pursuit of diplomatic options, especially with China, to slow or block North Korea from expanding its nuclear arsenal and developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could deliver a warhead to U.S. shores.
Tensions rose sharply in northeast Asia last week when the Trump administration and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s government traded threats about a possible clash over an expected North Korean nuclear test.
In the end, Pyongyang test-fired a mid-range missile that fell into the sea seconds after launch, defusing the crisis for now.
And White House warnings that an aircraft carrier strike force was rushing north proved false; the armada was 3,500 miles away last weekend, although the Pentagon insisted Wednesday the Carl Vinson and three other warships were now en route to the Sea of Japan.
As a candidate, Trump vowed to “rip up” the nuclear deal with Iran as soon as he took office, one of several signature foreign policy campaign promises on which he has failed to act.
Several members of Trump’s incoming Cabinet said during their Senate confirmation hearings that they had decided the accord had effectively constrained Iran’s ability to produce a nuclear bomb, and Trump has not moved to abrogate the accord.
Congress has required the State Department to notify it every 90 days whether Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal, which required Tehran to dismantle or disable its nuclear infrastructure, including its ability to produce bomb-grade fuel.
The United Nations Security Council lifted a web of trade, banking and other sanctions on Iran last year after the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency, had certified that Tehran had complied with the nuclear deal.
In January, a year after the deal came into force, the IAEA said Iran had reduced its uranium stockpile by 98 percent and had removed two-thirds of its centrifuges, which can be used to enrich uranium.
Yet on a visit to Riyadh on Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis told Saudi officials that it was important to “reinforce Saudi Arabia’s resistance to Iran’s mischief.”
Speaking later to reporters, Mattis added, “Everywhere you look (that) there’s trouble in the region, you find Iran.” He said the Trump administration would help countries “trying to checkmate” Iran.
Tillerson said the White House will look at more than whether Iran is meeting its obligations under the nuclear accord, citing its human rights record, its support for militants and what he called its “alarming and ongoing provocations to export terror and violence.”
The Iran nuclear deal, he told reporters, is “another example of buying off” an adversary that “only delays” production of nuclear weapons, citing a series of failed diplomatic deals with North Korea since the mid-1990s.