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Trump won't kill off Iran nuclear deal but calls on Congress to stiffen its terms Trump threatens to rip up Iran nuclear deal unless US and allies fix 'serious flaws'
(about 2 hours later)
President Trump has opted not to kill off the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, but has instead invited Congress to put new conditions on US compliance, which could jeopardise its future survival. Donald Trump has threatened to terminate the 2015 Iran nuclear deal if Congress and US allies fail to amend the agreement in significant ways.
The administration’s new, tougher, policy on Iran appears to be a messy compromise between a president determined to obliterate the diplomatic legacy of his predecessor, and his top cabinet officials and US allies, who have sought to preserve the agreement as way of avoiding a new nuclear crisis in the Middle East. In a vituperative speech on Friday that began by listing Iran’s alleged crimes over the decades, Trump announced he would not continue to certify the agreement to Congress, but stopped short of immediately cancelling US participation in the deal.
Under that compromise, Trump will make a speech on Friday repudiating the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), but will not call for its abrogation. Instead he will give Congress the opportunity to “fix” it by stiffening its terms. He said his administration was ready to negotiate with Congress and US allies on ways to toughen the obligations on Iran and making them permanent. But he made clear that if those negotiations failed to reach a solution, he would unilaterally pull the US out of the international agreement signed in Vienna two years ago.
“Based on the factual record I have put forward, I am announcing today that we cannot and will not make this certification. We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” Trump said.
The president declared: “I am directing my administration to work closely with Congress and our allies to address the deal’s many serious flaws so the Iranian regime can never threaten the world with nuclear weapons.”
He noted that congressional leaders were already drafting amendments to legislation that would include restrictions on ballistic missiles and make the curbs on Iran’s nuclear programme under the 2015 deal permanent. European diplomats have warned that any such unilateral changes to the agreement are likely to trigger the deal’s collapse and a return to a nuclear standoff in the Middle East.
But Trump made clear that if the changes were not made, he would personally pull the plug on the deal.
“In the event we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated,” Trump said. “It is under continuous review and our participation can be cancelled by me, as president, at any time.”
On two major issues, Trump flatly contradicted his own secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who had briefed journalists on Thursday evening. Tillerson said that new restrictions on Iranian missile development and the permanent nature of the nuclear constraints could be laid down in a parallel agreement that could exist side by side with the 2015 deal and not trigger its collapse.
Furthermore, the president said he had ordered the US Treasury to sanction Iran’s “entire” Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). Only hours earlier, Tillerson had said that was impractical for such a large organisation and that instead, selective sanctions would be used against individuals and entities responsible for arming and funding militant groups abroad.
The administration’s new, tougher policy on Iran appears to be a messy compromise between a president determined to obliterate the diplomatic legacy of his predecessor, and his top cabinet officials and US allies, who have sought to preserve the agreement as way of avoiding a new nuclear crisis in the Middle East.
The implications of that approach are unclear. The other signatories to the deal, including three European allies, Russia, China and Iran, have said renegotiation is impossible.The implications of that approach are unclear. The other signatories to the deal, including three European allies, Russia, China and Iran, have said renegotiation is impossible.
In another sign of compromise, plans to declare Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a terrorist organisation appear to have been abandoned at the eleventh hour. Instead, IRGC members and front companies suspected of supplying weapons and funds to militants around the region will be sanctioned separately. Within minutes, the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, issued a stinging rebuke to Trump’s threat, pointing out that the nuclear deal had been enshrined in a UN security council resolution in 2015, that could not simply be terminated by one country.
An effort will also be made to negotiate with US allies a new set of multilateral sanctions on Iran for its ballistic missile programme. “To my knowledge there is not one single country in the world that can terminate a UN security council resolution that has been adopted,” Mogherini told journalists in Brussels. “The president of the United States has many powers, but not this one.”
Speaking to journalists before Trump’s speech, the US secretary of State, Rex Tillerson confirmed that the JCPOA would survive, but that the president would no longer formally endorse the agreement, under existing legislation called the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA), on the grounds that Iran was benefiting from it more than the US. But Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, was quick to praise the speech, in a video prerecorded before the beginning of the Jewish sabbath in Israel.
“The intent is that we will stay in the JCPOA, but the president is going to decertify under INARA,” Tillerson said. “So that’s what the president has asked us to do – is either put more teeth into this obligation that Iran is undertaking for all of the sanctions relief and the benefit it receives. Or let’s just forget the whole thing and we’ll walk away and we’ll start all over.” Netanyahu, who has for years lobbied for a tougher US policy against Iran and who had clearly been briefed on the content, said he wanted to “congratulate President Trump for his courageous decision today” and for “boldly confront[ing] Iran’s terrorist regime”.
The secretary of state said that after Trump’s declaration, Congress would have three alternatives. It could reimpose the sanctions that the US and other signatories suspended under the JCPOA in return for Iran’s acceptance of strict curbs on its nuclear programme. Or Congress could do nothing, and the deal would continue to function as before. “President Trump has just created an opportunity to fix this bad deal, to roll back Iran’s aggression, and to confront its criminal support of terrorism. That’s why Israel embraces this opportunity,” he said.
The third option, which the administration is recommending, is to rewrite the INARA legislation to stipulate conditions under which US sanctions would automatically be reimposed, and the US would thereby walk away from the JCPOA, with no further debate.
“Let’s take the INARA and amend the INARA to put in place some very firm trigger points that if Iran crosses any of these trigger points the sanctions automatically go back into place,” Tillerson said.
In the Senate, Republicans Bob Corker and Joseph Cotton, have began drafting legislation aimed at toughening the conditions for Iran under the JCPOA.
However, if the new criteria in the INARA amendments are different from those agreed as part of the JCPOA in 2015, that would imply that the US consider itself no longer bound by the agreement, which would itself constitute a breach, advocates of the deal said.
“For the United States to begin, through Congress, or other means, try to reconstitute the deal would represent a violation,” Ben Rhodes, one of Barack Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, said. “This is completely unnecessary and arbitrary. Trump’s team wanted to find a rationalisation for an irrational decision.”
Until Thursday, administration officials were briefing journalists that President Trump intended to declare the IRGC a terrorist group, but Tillerson said it was decided that would be unworkable for such a sprawling organisation, particularly as US and IRGC forces find themselves in close proximity in Syria.
“There are particular risks and complexities to designating an entire army, so to speak, of a country where that then puts in place certain requirements where we run into one another in the battlefield … that we think are not appropriate and not necessarily in the best interest of our military actions,” Tillerson said.
“So the sanctions are around getting the financing structures themselves and getting at certain individuals and penalising people who are supporting these kinds of activity.”