President Trump’s decision to review the Obama administration’s nuclear agreement with Iran is a “prudent” step toward deciding whether the U.S. should ultimately pull out of the deal, White House press secretary Sean Spicer said on Wednesday.
“I think he’s doing the prudent thing by asking for a review of the current deal and what’s happening,” Spicer said of Trump, who asked his National Security Council on Tuesday to evaluate how continuing sanctions relief for Iran serves U.S. interests.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified to Congress this week that Iran has thus far complied with the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). However, Tillerson warned that the Iranian regime’s support for terrorism could threaten the future of a deal former President Barack Obama touted as one of his biggest foreign policy achievements.
“Obviously any action that we would take, if we did, is something that gets vetted through the interagency process, and all of those kinds of considerations are taken,” Spicer said Wednesday in answer to questions about whether the administration had weighed the negative effects of renewing sanctions against Iran.
“Sanctions have been an effective tool in many cases,” Spicer said. “As we’ve mentioned, the president doesn’t telegraph what options he’s going to take.”
Although Congress voted to impose sanctions on Iran, Obama unilaterally removed them through a legal provision that allowed him to do so in the “vital national security interest” of the U.S.
Trump’s review will examine whether the suspension of sanctions against Iran truly is “vital to our national security interests,” Spicer said Wednesday.
Reinstating the sanctions could effectively nullify the Iran deal by putting Tehran back on a path to nuclearization.
However, critics of the agreement — including Trump himself — have argued that the current deal was poorly negotiated and required too many concessions from the U.S. Although he had threatened on the campaign trail to tear up the agreement, Trump has stayed mostly quiet since taking office on whether his administration will uphold his predecessor’s Iran policies.
