News max
President Donald Trump is on the verge of renewing the American certification of the Iran nuclear deal for the second time since he took office, despite declarations as a candidate it is a disastrous and dangerous agreement, BuzzFeed News reported Monday.
At the same time, the administration issued tough talking points promising it would continue searching for ways to change the deal.
The administration is required to declare if Teheran is adhering to the agreement every 90 days, and Trump already did that once in April.
The tough talk includes saying the Treasury Department would impose sanctions on seven Iranian government entities and five individuals to punish Iran for what it called "malign activities," such as continuing work on developing ballistic missiles, support for terrorism, backing Syrian President Bashar Assad's brutality, hostility to Israel, and cyber attacks on the West.
Former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton wrote in The Hill that Trump is making a mistake by certifying the deal, as the evidence is clear Iran is violating the agreement, and it should not take so long to review the administration's policy on the issue.
Bolton also said, since there is no chance of changing the Iranian deal, becasue Teheran would never agree to that, the U. S. should withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Also listed in the government's tough talking points, according to BuzzFeed, is that the "Trump administration will not make" the same mistake as the previous administration did by its "insistence on ignoring, excusing, and downplaying the full range of Iran's malign activities . . . that jeopardized American interests."