President Donald Trump announced on Friday a new strategy to confront what he called “the Iranian regime’s hostile actions.” Trump told reporters that the Iran nuclear deal signed by the Obama administration was “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” However, the president stopped short of pulling the U.S. out of the deal entirely.
Instead, Trump is expected to “decertify” Iran’s compliance with the deal, giving Congress 60 days to decide whether or not to impose new economic sanctions on Iran. The move allows Trump to appear as if he is rejecting the deal—fulfilling one of his main campaign promises—while still remaining in the agreement.
“The president, on many occasions, talked about either tearing the deal up or fixing the deal, and he said many times, we got to fix this deal,” Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said on Thursday. “What we are laying out here, this is the pathway, we think, that provides us with the best platform to attempt to fix this deal.”
The other parties involved in the deal, including Britain and Russia, are opposed to renegotiating the agreement, CNN reports, given that monitoring agencies have found Iran to be in compliance.
