Tabnak – The US President Donald Trump has once again certified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 nuclear deal, thereby keeping the hopes alive for the deal to be sustained. However, it seems that Washington is still close to actually refusing the historical deal by not staying committed to its terms.
International news outlets reported earlier Tuesday that the United States has for a second time certified Iran’s compliance with a 2015 nuclear agreement between the Islamic Republic and six other countries, including the US itself. The US President Donald Trump’s administration notified the Congress of continued Iranian compliance on Monday.
The US administration is bound by US law to notify the Congress of Iran’s compliance with the deal every 90 days. The Congress would then have to continue to withhold certain nuclear sanctions against Iran.
The Trump administration has been skeptical of the deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump has called the JCPOA "a very bad” deal and, as a presidential candidate, he had threatened that he would rip it up.
However, the process of convincing Trump to certify Iran’s compliance with the deal has seemingly been an easy one, according to the reports published by some American news outlets.
In this vein, Bloomberg reports that "a few hours on Monday afternoon, it looked like the White House was going to tell Congress it could not certify Iran was complying, without saying Iran was in breach of the pact. This would have triggered a 60-day period in which Congress could vote to re-impose the secondary sanctions lifted as a condition of the deal, or to strike it down altogether.”
The predicament, according to US administration officials, was that Congress, not to mention the other signatories to the seven-party agreement, was not prepared. Trump had yet to even put forward a broader Iran policy. What's more, the US intelligence community feels that Iran is pushing the edges, but overall is in compliance Iran deal.
In the same vein, The New York Times reported on Monday that Trump had only agreed to recertify Iranian compliance after an hour-long heated debate with his top aides and after he received "the consensus recommendation of his national security team.”
However, what is the US actually doing regarding Iran does not seem to be in line with its commitments under the deal. The latest indication of such a fact was that just hours after certifying Iran’s compliance, Trump administration announced a new set of sanctions against some individuals and entities which Washington claims are related to Iran’s military programs.
According to Reuters, the US Department of Treasury, in a statement, said it was targeting 16 entities and individuals for supporting what is said was "illicit Iranian actors or transnational criminal activity." The US State Department had also designated two Iranian organizations involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program, according to the Treasury Department.
It should be noted that the United Nations (UN) and the European Union (EU) have warned that the US could not unilaterally rescind the multilateral agreement. They regard the deal as a triumph for diplomacy and a major contributing factor to regional and international peace and stability.
However, witnessing such anti-Iranian acts, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Monday warned that any major non-performance by the US may prompt Iran’s withdrawal from the accord. Zarif has said the US is both in violation of the text and the spirit of the deal.
