Trump Seeks Way to
Declare Iran in Violation of Nuclear Deal
By DAVID E. SANGER
JULY
27, 2017
President Trump, frustrated that his national security aides
have not given him any options on how the United States can leave the Iran nuclear
deal, has instructed them to find a rationale for declaring that the country is
violating the terms of the accord.
American officials have already told allies they should be
prepared to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the United
States may abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord. And
according to several foreign officials, the United States has begun raising
with international inspectors in Vienna the possibility of demanding access to
military sites in Iran where there is reasonable suspicion of nuclear research
or development.
If the Iranians balk, as seems likely, their refusal could
enable Washington to declare Tehran in violation of the two-year-old deal.
Mr. Trump has enormous latitude to abandon the accord. It was
never a treaty because President Barack Obama knew that opposition to the
agreement in the Republican-dominated Senate was so great that he could never
get the two-thirds majority needed for ratification. Instead, he made an
executive agreement, one that his successor could eliminate by merely
disregarding the accord’s requirement to waive sanctions against Iran.
Mr. Trump’s instructions followed a sharp series of exchanges
last week with Secretary of State Rex
W. Tillerson, after Mr. Trump initially balked at certifying, for a
second time since he took office, that Iran is in compliance with the
agreement. He later reluctantly approved the certification.
Mr. Trump had expected to be presented with options for how to
get out of the deal, according to two officials, and in the words of one of
them, “he had a bit of a meltdown when that wasn’t one of the choices.”
Mr. Trump himself made it clear he does not plan to let that
happen again.
“We’re doing very detailed studies,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview
this week. Later, he added that when the next 90-day review of the deal comes
around — mandated by Congress two years ago — “I think they’ll be
noncompliant.”
His aides say they are not so sure of the outcome, and they
described the studies Mr. Trump referred to as evenhanded efforts to evaluate
the costs and benefits of staying inside the deal — with its sharp limitations
on Iran’s ability to produce nuclear fuel for at least the next nine years —
versus abandoning it.
Some concede that the diplomatic cost of abandoning the
agreement would be high. The other parties to the agreement — Britain, China,
France, Germany and Russia — do not share Mr. Trump’s objections. If the United
States withdraws support for the accord, it will be isolated on the issue, much
as it is on the climate change agreement.
But the president’s mind seems made up. “Look, I have a lot of
respect for Rex and his people, good relationship,” he said of Mr. Tillerson.
“It’s easier to say they comply. It’s a lot easier. But it’s the wrong thing.
They don’t comply.”
Even longtime critics of the deal in Congress have their doubts
about the wisdom of abandoning it. In an interview this week with David Ignatius
of The Washington Post, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee, strongly suggested that this is not the
moment to abandon something that is largely working.
“What I say to the president, and this is what Tillerson, Mattis
and McMaster say,” said Mr. Corker, referring to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis
and the national security adviser, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, is that “you can
only tear the agreement up one time.”
Right now, he added, “it’s not like a nuclear weapon is getting
ready to be developed.”
Absent any urgency, he argued for a more nuanced approach.
“Radically enforce it,” he said of the deal, demanding access to “various
facilities in Iran.”
“If they don’t let us in,” Mr. Corker said, “boom.”
He added: “You want the breakup of this deal to be about Iran.
You don’t want it to be about the U.S., because we want our allies with us.”
Mr. Tillerson, he said, ultimately wanted to renegotiate a deal that would stop
Iran from enriching uranium forever — a concession it is hard to imagine Iran
ever making.
Some version of Mr. Corker’s “radical enforcement” is
essentially the strategy that national security officials have described in
recent days. They deny they are trying to provoke the Iranians. Instead, they
say they are testing the utility of the accord so they can report back to Mr.
Trump about whether Iran’s interpretation of the provisions of the agreement,
and its separate commitments to the International Atomic Energy Agency, would
pave the way for international inspectors to go anywhere in the country.
That probably sets the stage for some kind of standoff.
Iran has long said that its most sensitive military locations
are off limits. That issue came to a head in 2015 when international inspectors
demanded access to Parchin, a military base near Tehran where there was
evidence of past nuclear work. A compromise was worked out in which Iran took
environmental samples itself, under surveillance by agency inspectors. The
inspectors found little, but the precedent of how the inspection was carried
out was cited by critics of the deal as evidence that the Iranians could hide
work on uranium enrichment or other technology in off-limits military
facilities.
It is unclear whether American intelligence agencies possess
evidence of potential violations that go beyond suspicions. Several senior
intelligence officials have warned there are risks involved in directing the
international agency to specific locations, only to discover nothing nefarious.
Such an outcome would have echoes, they caution, of the failed effort to find
weapons of mass destruction in Iraq in 2003.
One of Mr. Trump’s complaints about the 2015 deal is that it
covers only nuclear activity, not support for terrorism, or missile testing, or
Iran’s activities in Syria and Iraq. The State Department complained that
an Iranian launch of a missile into space on
Thursday violated the spirit of the nuclear accord.
The missile test was the first by Iran since Mr. Trump took
office. But such tests of what are essentially carrier rockets are not
prohibited.
The missile that was launched is known as a Simorgh, or Phoenix,
which experts said was a copy of North Korea’s Unha space launch vehicle.
Iran’s national news channel said the rocket was capable of placing satellites
weighing up to 250 kilograms, or about 550 pounds, into a low earth orbit of
500 kilometers, or about 300 miles.
Nader Karimi Joni, a journalist close to the government of
Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, said Thursday’s launch was a reaction to the
House of Representatives’ vote on Tuesday approving a new round of sanctions
against Iran. The Senate approved the bill Thursday night.
“Iran is boosting its missile capabilities in order to increase
the accuracy, preciseness and range,” Mr. Joni said. “Iran will not stop the
missile projects.”
In a sign of continuing struggles over Iran policy, the White
House confirmed that Derek Harvey, the head of Middle East affairs on the
National Security Council, was removed from his post on Thursday. No
explanation was given, but Mr. Harvey was known to be especially hawkish about
Iran’s role in the region, and he was appointed by the previous national
security adviser, Michael T. Flynn. Mr. Harvey was widely reported to have been
at odds with General McMaster, the current national security adviser, on Middle
East policy.