Trump imposes new Iran sanctions

The White House ruled Iran in compliance with the 2015 nuclear accord — an Obama-era deal that Donald Trump has called “disastrous” — but warned that it planned to toughen its stance on the regime in response to what it said were “malign” activities across the Middle East. On Monday, Rex Tillerson, US secretary of state, notified Congress that Iran was still abiding by the deal — a certification required every 90 days — that ensured waivers for nuclear-related sanctions on the Iranian regime would remain in place.  The move came after a heated debate inside the administration about whether to issue a second certification for an accord that Mr Trump repeatedly lambasted during the campaign.

As The Financial Times writes in an article "Trump imposes new Iran sanctions", the administration had been preparing to issue the certification on Monday before a midnight deadline, and senior officials were lined up to brief reporters. But the White House postponed the briefing after Mr Trump expressed frustration over the move. One person familiar with the debate said that Mr Trump leaned towards withdrawing certification, but decided he had no choice since the state department had not crafted a plan to deal with an outcome in which the agreement was suspended.

While the administration ultimately certified compliance, officials said that Mr Trump would increase pressure on Iran over its ballistic missile tests, cyber attacks and other actions that they said “severely undermined” the intent of the nuclear accord. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed by the US, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany in 2015. “Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit of the JCPOA,” said one US official. 

The US official said that the Obama administration had focused Iran policy too narrowly around the JCPOA, and stressed that the Trump administration would create a strategy to “address the totality” of Iranian behaviour — that would likely include additional non-nuclear sanctions on Iran.

Jon Wolfsthal, the top White House official for arms control and non-proliferation during the Obama administration, said the Trump team’s increasingly assertive approach on Iran was dangerous. “I have no problem getting tough with Iran, but think it would be harder to do so if they have an active nuclear programme,” he said. “I also think the goal would be to isolate Iran and make them feel heat. How do we do that if we pull out of the deal, leave Europe blaming us and not Iran?”

Speaking to CNN on Sunday, Javad Zarif, the Iranian foreign minister, stressed that the International Atomic Energy Agency had certified Iranian compliance seven times. He said that Iran had “faithfully” complied with the deal, but the US had not upheld the terms. Mr Zarif said that Mr Trump had asked other leaders at the recent G20 summit in Hamburg to urge companies not to conduct business with Iran. “That is a violation of not the spirit but of the letter . . . of the nuclear deal,” Mr Zarif told the cable network.

During the US presidential campaign, Mr Trump repeatedly slammed the Iran accord and said his top priority would be to dismantle the “disastrous” deal. But his team has been hampered by the fact that Iran has remained in compliance according to the IAEA, and also because even some of the critics of the deal are concerned that walking away from the accord would embolden Iran to develop nuclear weapons.

Some European countries have expressed concern that US moves to punish Iran in other ways could be interpreted by Tehran as disingenuous efforts to target the regime while claiming to adhere to the nuclear accord.

Another of three officials who briefed reporters before the formal certification said European allies agreed with the US about the need to police the accord more strictly.