The Trump administration is reviewing the Obama-era nuclear weapons agreement with Iran to determine whether they will stop the deal's suspension of U.S. sanctions, U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Wednesday.
U.S. President Donald Trump has directed the National Security Council to review the global agreement on Iran's nuclear program and evaluate whether suspending sanctions "is vital to the national security interests of the United States".
The State Department must notify of Iran's compliance with the deal every 90 days and it is the first such notification issued by the Trump administration.
Proponents of the agreement have long acknowledged it doesn't address concerns about Iran's non-nuclear behavior, such as developing its ballistic missile program or supporting Houthi rebels in Yemen.
The European Union's foreign policy chief, Frederica Mogherini, said last month after meetings with senior Trump administration officials she was reassured in the talks that the United States was committed to fully implementing the deal.
"That is why we have to look at Iran in a very comprehensive way in terms of the threat it poses in all areas of the region and the world", he added.
He said the National Security Council-led interagency review of the agreement will evaluate whether it "is vital to the national security interests of the United States".
USA partners in the deal - including Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - would likely balk at linking compliance with the deal with terrorism.
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Trump has called the agreement "the worst deal ever negotiated".
Any U.S. move to reimpose sanctions could cause Iran to pull out of the deal.
The National Iranian American Council (NIAC) said Wednesday that President Trump could effectively rip up the accord, by violating its terms on sanctions. We should double up and triple up the sanctions and have them come to us.
Trump's Secretary of Defense, General James Mattis, has also criticized the deal and Iran's actions in the Middle East.
Since taking office, Trump's administration has adopted a hawkish and confrontational stance with Tehran.
"In addition to its ongoing support for Hizballah in Syria, Iran continued to provide arms, financing, training, and the facilitation of primarily Iraqi, Afghan, and Pakistani Shia fighters to support the Asad regime's brutal crackdown that has resulted in the deaths of more than 250,000 people in Syria", the report stated.
"The lack of communication, the return to this sort of decades of policies of coercion and further sanctions and so forth, unfortunately, will not bode well in reducing the friction and animosity between the two countries", Kiyaei said, pointing out that all of this made cooperation more hard at a time when there are many opportunities for it.
President Hassan Rouhani, who signed the historic nuclear deal in 2015, is under pressure ahead of a presidential election next month - with many accusing him of failing to capitalize on the removal of sanctions as Iran's economy stagnates.
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