WASHINGTON, DC – United States Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley says President Donald Trump is both justified and has the authority to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal should the commander in chief decide not to re-certify the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) late next month.
“I am not going to prejudge in any way what the president is going to decide next month,” Haley said at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) on Tuesday. “While I have discussed it with him, I do not know what decision he will make. It is his decision to make and his alone.”
Haley said that while she was “not making the case for decertifying,” should the president decide to decertify “he has grounds to stand on.”
Haley, who recently met with Iran nuclear monitors in Vienna, noted that the decision to recertify a deal that the Obama administration designed “to be too big to fail” is a “complicated question.”
She did warn that if the Iranian regime continues down this path unchecked, the world will be “dealing with the next North Korea.”
Should the president decide against certifying Iranian compliance, Haley said, “what happens next is significantly in Congress’s hands.” Haley noted that “If the president chooses not to certify Iranian compliance, that does not mean the United States is withdrawing from the JCPOA.”
“The truth is, the Iran deal has so many flaws that it’s tempting to leave it. But the deal was constructed in a way that makes leaving it less attractive,” the ambassador said. “It gave Iran what it wanted up-front, in exchange for temporary promises to deliver what we want.” READ MORE
