President Donald Trump has ordered a review of the Iran nuclear deal, Rex Tillerson says. While Tillerson wrote in a letter that Tehran was complying with its part of the deal, he questioned the lifting of sanctions, calling Iran “a state sponsor of terror.”
On Tuesday, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson sent a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), confirming that Iran is compliant with its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA ).
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The JCPOA is an agreement signed in 2015 under former US President Barack Obama along with China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the EU, to ensure that “Iran’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful.”
Although Tillerson said that Iran is compliant with the agreement, he questioned whether lifting sanctions was in the best interest of the US, saying that Iran “remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods.”
Tillerson also informed Ryan that the Trump administration will be conducting an inter-agency review of the JCPOA to “evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States,” Tillerson said in a press release from the State Department.
The JCPOA will not lift all sanctions against Iran until “transition day,” which comes eight years after the agreement was signed in 2023.
