The State Department would not respond to a warning from Iran’s president that it would be an act of political self-destruction for President Donald Trump to dismantle the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
“Those who want to tear up the nuclear deal should know that they will be ripping up their own political life,” said Iranian president Hassan Rouhani, newly elected to a second term, at a Saturday inaugural event.
The State Department brushed off Rouhani’s heated remark. “I’m not going to comment on every statement by an Iranian official,” an official told TWS.
Trump said late last month that Iran was not complying with the deal. “They don’t comply,” he said. “They’ve taken advantage of a president named Barack Obama who didn’t know what the hell he was doing.”
The president has reluctantly agreed twice to certify that Iran is implementing the deal, a notification that he is required to make to Congress every 90 days and that allows Tehran to keep receiving sanctions relief. But Trump predicted in late July that Iranian compliance would not be certified at the next deadline in the fall.
“If it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days ago,” he said.
Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have clashed over the nuclear deal, with Tillerson advising the president to recertify it at the previous deadline, in July, effectively letting the deal live.
Opponents of the deal have since accused the State Department of trying to entangle the Trump administration in a series of diplomatic processes in order to preserve the agreement.
Rouhani also criticized the United States for not being committed to implementing the deal. His remarks on Saturday came after Trump signed into law a sanctions package that punishes Tehran for its ballistic missile program and other activities.
“Iran would not be the first to pull out of the nuclear deal, but it will not remain silent about the U.S. repeated violations of the accord,” Rouhani said.
Trump and others have stressed that the United States cannot ignore Iran’s non-nuclear activities, including ballistic missile testing and human rights abuses, at the expense of the nuclear deal, as they charge the previous administration did. The president has also accused Iran of being in violation of the spirit of the nuclear agreement.
White House officials are leading a comprehensive Iran policy review that is expected to be completed some time in August, and will likely play in to the upcoming compliance certification to Congress.
