Citing the “decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States is leaving the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and re-imposing all economic sanctions lifted or waived under the agreement.
“The Iran deal is defective at its core,” Trump said in an address from the White House. “If we do nothing, we know exactly what will happen. In just a short period of time, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapons.”
The Treasury Department said that sanctions will be subject to either 90- or 180-day wind-down periods, allowing foreign companies to withdraw their existing business. “Within the zone of economics covered by the sanctions, no new contracts are permitted,” National security adviser John Bolton told reporters.
Trump described the penalties as “the highest level of economic sanctions.”
“If the regime continues its nuclear aspirations, it will have bigger problems than it has ever had before,” Trump said. He warned that any country that helps Iran in future efforts to obtain nuclear weapons could also face stringent U.S. sanctions.
The president signed a presidential memorandum to reinstate the sanctions related to the nuclear deal on camera after his address, which directed the Treasury and the State Departments to “prepare immediately for the re-imposition of all of the U.S. sanctions … to be accomplished as expeditiously as possible and in no case later than 180 days” from Tuesday.
Trump faced a May 12 deadline to continue waiving certain sanctions lifted under the deal and related to Iran’s Central Bank as well as its crude oil sales. He chose to reimpose those sanctions, as well as a larger set due for waiver renewal in July.
The president slammed the 2015 agreement on Tuesday as a “horrible, one-sided deal” with expiring provisions that neglects Iran’s ballistic missile activity, support for terrorism, and military influence in the region.
“The deal lifted crippling economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for very weak limits on the regime’s nuclear activity and no limits at all on its other malign behavior,” he said.
In term of next steps, Trump said the U.S. would be working with allies to secure “a real, comprehensive and lasting solution to the Iranian nuclear threat.” He said that includes addressing the country’s ballistic missile program, terrorist activities, and malign influence in the Middle East.
Germany, France, and the U.K. lamented Trump’s decision to withdraw in a joint statement Tuesday and said they would remain party to the deal. In a statement, the trio expressed openness to addressing the issues raised by the president, with the nuclear deal “as a base.”
“A long-term framework for Iran’s nuclear program after some of the provisions of the JCPOA expire, after 2025, will have to be defined,” the statement said, using an acronym for the deal. “Because our commitment to the security of our allies and partners in the region is unwavering, we must also address in a meaningful way shared concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile program and its destabilizing regional activities.”
Trump vowed in March 2016 to “dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.” He has begrudgingly waived sanctions and until mid-October recertified the deal to Congress numerous times. But the president warned in January that if European allies did not agree on fixes to the deal’s “disastrous flaws,” the U.S. would not waive sanctions again. “This is a last chance,” he said.
Trump has cited the deal’s expiring provisions, its weak inspections regime, and its failure to address Tehran’s ballistic missile development. The Europeans negotiated with U.S. officials for months on a potential supplementary agreement, but there was reportedly disagreement related to extending the deal. Opponents of the deal, skeptical about the Europeans’ support for cleaning up the agreement, have been weary of a “fig leaf” fix.
Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), saw the announcement Tuesday as the “launch of a maximum pressure campaign” aimed at a more comprehensive deal.
“The president has decided to nix, but ‘nix to a fix,’” he told reporters. Withdrawing from the deal and putting pressure on Iran’s economy with the threat of sanctions, he said, could bring Iran back to the negotiating table.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo expressed a desire during his April confirmation hearing for better deal and continued diplomacy, including after Saturday’s sanctions waiver deadline.
“If there’s no chance that we can fix it, I will recommend to the president that we do our level best to work with our allies to achieve a better outcome and a better deal,” he told lawmakers. “Even after May 12 there is still much diplomatic work to be done.”
European companies have re-entered Iran since the implementation of the deal, following then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s campaign to encourage foreign economic engagement with Iran. Behnam Ben Taleblu, a research fellow at FDD, said the reimposition of sanctions will force Europeans businesses to re-evaluate their interests there.
“There is a large decision tree of options that Europe must consider, all which stem from one debate which has the potential to spiral out of control: Adhere to U.S. secondary sanctions or shield Iran and follow EU blocking authorities,” he told TWS.
“They’re very much between an Iranian rock and a Trumpian hard place,” Dubowitz added during a call with reporters.
European leaders took turns visiting with Trump ahead of the sanctions deadline. French president Emmanuel Macron laid out his vision of a so-called “new deal” in an address to Congress last month. It appeared to include the old deal as its first “pillar,” along with provisions that address the agreement’s expiration date, Tehran’s influence in the region, and ballistic missile testing.
“We should not abandon it without having something substantial and more substantial instead,” Macron said. “That’s why France will not leave the JCPOA, because we signed it.”
