Trump Won't Certify Iran Nuclear Deal, but He Also Won't Unravel It
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGEROCT. 13, 2017
WASHINGTON — President Trump will make good on Friday on a long-running threat to disavow the Iran nuclear deal that was negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama. But he will stop short, for now, of unraveling the accord or even rewriting it, as the deal’s defenders had once feared.
In a speech on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump will declare his intention not to certify Iran’s compliance with the agreement. Doing so essentially kicks to Congress a decision about whether to reimpose sanctions on Iran, which would blow up the agreement.
But the Trump administration made it clear that it wants to leave the 2015 accord intact, at least for now. Instead, it is asking Congress to establish “trigger points,” which could prompt the United States to reimpose sanctions on Iran if it crosses thresholds set by Congress.
Those could include continued ballistic missile launches by Iran, a refusal to extend the duration of constraints on its nuclear fuel production, or a conclusion by the United States’ intelligence agencies that Iran could produce a nuclear weapon in less than a year.
Mr. Trump plans to outline a broad strategy that “focuses on neutralizing the government of Iran’s destabilizing influence and constraining its aggression, particularly its support for terrorism and militants,” the White House said in a summary issued Thursday evening.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/us/politics/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html