The Trump administration recertified the Iranian nuclear deal Monday.
The agreement, also known as the JCPOA, went into effect in October 2015 and is between China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, the U.S., the European Union, and Iran. President Obama said the agreement would stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, although then-candidate Trump slammed it and promised to “rip up” the deal.
“My number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran,” Trump said in a May 2016 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).
Senior administration officials, however, told reporters that Iran has followed the conditions laid out in the nuclear deal and thus it will be recertified. A senior official said that Iran is not following the “spirit” of the agreement, therefore new sanctions will be levied against Iran. A senior administration official pointed to Iran’s missile development, hostility to Israel, cyberattacks against foreign nations, and human rights abuses as causes for concern.
A senior official said that “moving forward the administration intends to employ a strategy that will address the totality of Iran’s malign behavior and not just narrowly focus on the nuclear agreement.”