Trump Not Expected to Certify Iranian Compliance with the Nuclear Deal

With the Oct. 15 deadline for certifying to Congress that Iran is in compliance with the nuclear deal, officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, Donald Trump is set to deliver a speech next week regarding his intentions. According to a report this afternoon from Adam Kredo at the Washington Free Beacon, Trump will decline to certify. That will give Congress 60 days to decide whether or not to reimpose the nuclear-related sanctions on Iran that the Obama administration lifted in exchange for limits on the country’s nuclear program. Should Congress reinstate sanctions, the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy initiative is almost surely doomed.

It appears that Trump faced strong opposition, even from his own Cabinet officials. Press reports Tuesday described a last-ditch effort by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to convince the president to certify an agreement the president has called one of the “worst and most one-sided transactions.” Trump’s two top defense officials, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford, also expressed support for the deal Tuesday in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Asked by Sen. Angus King if he believed it was in the U.S. national interest to stay in the deal, Mattis replied “yes, Senator, I do.”

Apparently, Trump disagrees. So do two of the president’s top allies in the Iran fight, Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton. "Even if [the Iranians] were complying with it,” Cotton said, “even if it was fully verifiable they were complying with it, which it's not and which they aren't, it is still not in our viable national security interests because it does not block Iran's path to a bomb.”

As Cruz explained, “Iran's continued refusal to allow IAEA access to military sites—a clear requirement of the terms of the deal—renders the JCPOA utterly ineffective, and, even worse, a sham that only facilitates Iran's acquiring nuclear weapons.” Cruz continued: "This absence of any meaningful verification is yet another reason to vitiate this foolhardy agreement."

The 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act stipulates that the president must certify in a letter to congress every ninety days that the Iran deal has met four conditions specified in the law. Declining to certify does not itself dismantle the deal, but it is probably a necessary first step because it's a basic acknowledgment the deal needs to be dismantled. Within sixty days, congress can re-impose sanctions on an expedited basis with majority votes . The administration would also be set up to further unravel the deal by going to the U.N. to reinstate multilateral sanctions.