WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump could announce his secret decision on the future of the Iran nuclear deal next week.
US officials familiar with the president’s planning said Wednesday he is preparing to deliver an Iran policy speech in which he is expected to declare the landmark 2015 agreement contrary to America’s national security interests.
The speech has been tentatively scheduled for Oct. 12 at an as yet undetermined venue in Washington, according to two officials who weren’t authorized to publicly discuss the planning for the event and demanded anonymity. They cautioned that plans could still change, and the White House declined to comment on the timing or substance of Trump’s pending announcement.
Trump faces an Oct. 15 deadline to tell Congress if he believes Iran is complying with the seven-nation pact and if it advances US interests.
The president has called the 2015 deal, which forced Iran to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for broad relief from international economic sanctions, one of the nation’s “worst and most one-sided transactions” ever. But many of his top national security aides don’t want to dismantle the deal, and America’s European allies have lobbied the Trump administration heavily not to walk away from the agreement.
“We’re going to give him a couple of options of how to move forward to advance the important policy toward Iran,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told reporters Wednesday. He said the Iran deal comprised “only a small part” of the government’s approach to Iran, a traditional US adversary in the Middle East that Washington considers the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism.
The Iran deal’s future may hinge on a face-saving fix for Trump so he doesn’t have to recertify the Islamic republic’s compliance every 90 days, as mandated in a provision of a 2015 U.S. law known as the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. READ MORE
