A lawmaker expressed reservations about the US ability to convince other parties to the 2015 nuclear deal to comply with his excessive conditions, dismissing President Donald Trump's threats of withdrawal as a publicity stunt.
"Trump lacks the ability to successfully impose his conditions on the JCPOA. He is only seeking to stage a show of power by inflaming the menacing atmosphere," Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh told ICANA in a recent talk.
JCPOA stands for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official title of the landmark agreement.
Falahatpisheh was commenting on a recent Washington Post report that cited an unnamed US administration official as saying Trump has toughened his deal stance by adding to the conditions he has demanded for agreeing to remain committed to the action plan.
"He did not even succeed in dictating his preliminary conditions regarding the JCPOA. The Europeans did not lend enough support to Trump … and Iran is also unlikely to allow amendments to the action plan," the parliamentarian noted.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the deal negotiated by the previous US administration for giving Iran "far too much in exchange for far too little."
His administration has embarked on high-level talks with the Europeans to try to find a way to address his concerns before a May 12 deadline he has set for leaving the deal.
US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has described discussions so far as "very fruitful".
Trump has also tasked the US Congress with legislating changes in the agreement in the same time frame.
He has demanded not only that non-nuclear issues be addressed but also that the deal itself be altered to eliminate sunset clauses for some of the restrictions it places on Iran, to harden the inspection rules and to limit development of ballistic missiles.
New Demands
A senior official involved in developing Trump's Iran policy has told the Washington Post that the Iran hawk has more demands than those highlighted by the media.
"The president laid out six major areas where he wanted the Europeans to work with the United States to put together a united front on demanding that the Iranians alter their behavior," the official said, also including alleged human rights violations, cyber threats, and the financial activities of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps.
The deal came into being with few friends in congress, and some Republicans have called for killing it outright.
For the three leading European allies, outright US withdrawal or insistence on a rewrite that they—let alone Iran and fellow signatories Russia and China—have said they will never accept, could spark the most serious international rift with the US administration to date.
Two Mandates
Two statutory mandates have given Trump the opening to directly threaten the agreement.
One, imposed by congress when it allowed the agreement to move forward in 2015, requires the president to certify Iranian compliance every 90 days.
After two rounds of certification, Trump said last October that he would issue no more certifications, despite the International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly verifying that Iran has abided by the limits the deal placed on its nuclear program in return for easing international sanctions.
More ominous is that pre-deal sanctions related to Iran's nuclear program, lifted when the agreement went into effect, must be waived by the president every 120 days.
Trump issued the waivers in mid-January along with a warning that he was doing so for the last time "only in order to secure our European allies' agreement to fix the terrible flaws of the Iran nuclear deal."
Iran has made clear that it would stick to its JCPOA commitments as long as the deal is assessed to be serving its national interests.
It has ruled out a reopening of the deal, stressed that its missile program is of a purely defensive nature, and dismissed accusations that its regional activities are destabilizing.
