Donald Trump order’s a review into the nuclear deal struck with Iran under Obama

The US Department of Justice announced that a nuclear agreement with Iran brokered during Barack Obama’s presidency will be up for review. Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of state for US has said that Iran is complying with the terms that agreement but they still continue to foment state sponsored terrorism. So, Trump administration has ordered the National Security Council to look into the deal and find out whether providing sanctions relief to Iran is in US’s best interests in terms of national security.

President Donald Trump isn’t a big fan of the 2015 deal, and had called it the worst negotiated deal ever. The agreement was brokered after nearly one and half years of negotiation between U.S., U.K., China, France and Russia, Germany, and Iran. According to the deal, Iran would have to limit its nuclear ambitions and in exchange some of the oil and economic sanctions imposed on Iran would be lifted. Those sanctions were costing Iran billions of dollars.
The deal requires the State Department to submit a report to the Congress once in every three months regarding Iran’s compliance with the terms. Tillerson did so by writing a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan; this is the first update during Donald Trump’s presidency. Nothing was mentioned in the letter about the time line for the review process.

“Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror, through many platforms and methods,” Tillerson said in a statement issued on Wednesday. “President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the JCPOA is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”

The US had often accused Iran of supporting terrorists, but those accusations were set aside when the deal was signed. But Barack Obama said that the deal would ensure that Iran never gets any nuclear weapons. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani who signed the deal is up for re-election next month and is going to face Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a hardliner who had fiercely criticized the deal earlier and if he wins the polls, the review will probably take that into account as well.