Bolton: Working with Iran may trigger sanctions

WASHINGTON — European countries and companies that continue to do business with Iran could face U.S. sanctions, national security adviser John Bolton said Sunday.

Part of the flaw in the Iran deal that President Donald Trump rejected was that it enticed Europe and the U.S. into economic relations with Iran that would work against holding the country accountable for violations of the agreement, Bolton said.

“Why would any business, why would the shareholders of any business, want to do business with the world’s central banker of international terrorism?” Bolton said on ABC’s “This Week.”

Trump last week announced his intention to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal, calling the multilateral agreement “defective at its core” and unable to fully prevent Iran from making a nuclear weapon. The announcement triggered U.S. plans to reimpose sanctions on the Islamic Republic within about six months.

Trump’s decision drew swift criticism from the deal’s other signatories, including U.S. allies in Europe who tried for weeks to persuade Trump to remain on board and said they plan to keep their commitment to the deal.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Sunday that withdrawing from the 2015 agreement wasn’t aimed at Europeans, but he didn’t rule out the U.S. imposing sanctions on entities that continue to do business with Iran, even as efforts continue to strike a new deal.

“I am hopeful in the days and weeks ahead we can come up with a deal that really works, that really protects the world from Iranian bad behavior,” Pompeo said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Changing the regime in Iran is “not the policy of the administration,” Bolton said on ABC. In a separate interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” he said Iran’s economic condition is “really quite shaky,” so the impact of sanctions “could be dramatic.”

“The consequences of American sanctions go well beyond goods shipped by American companies,” Bolton said. “Because of our technology licenses to many other countries and businesses around the world, as those sanctions kick in, it will have an even broader effect as well.”