The Trump Administration Has Finished Reviewing Its Iran Policy; Now We Wait

THE WEEKLY STANDARD, SEP 13, 2017 – The Trump administration has completed its comprehensive review of America’s Iran policy, according to an administration source, setting the stage for a possible recalibration of the nuclear deal with that country, which Donald Trump campaigned against in last year’s election.
In the short term, the president is unlikely to make a formal announcement of his new Iran policy, although Trump could touch on the subject during his address to the United Nations General Assembly next Tuesday. Trump is more likely to speak publicly about the new policy about a month from now, closer to the next deadline for the president to recertify Iran’s compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Previously, Trump has begrudgingly recertified, which federal law requires him to do every 90 days, with the White House saying that it needed time to finish its policy review process.
Now that the review is complete, the president must decide whether to recertify again. Trump has been opposed to recertification on the merits but has so far been persuaded on prudential grounds to not decertify.
Last week, U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley made a public case for why the president would be justified in not recertifying Iran’s compliance.
“If the president chooses not to certify Iranian compliance, that does not mean the United States is withdrawing from the JCPOA,” Haley said at the American Enterprise Institute on September 5. “If the president finds that he cannot certify Iranian compliance, it would be a message to Congress that the administration believes either that Iran is in violation of the deal, or that the lifting of sanctions against Iran is not appropriate and proportional to the regime’s behavior, or that the lifting of sanctions is not in the U.S. national security interest, or any combination of the three.”
The administration has been communicating with leaders on Capitol Hill about the possibility that Trump could choose not to recertify. Before the most recent recertification in July, a group of Republican senators urged the president to decertify, citing the Tehran regime’s “aggressive and destabilizing behavior.” Trump himself has said Iran is not living up to “the spirit of the deal” and Haley argued last week that Iran’s compliance is “not as straightforward as many people believe.”
The JCPOA and Iran’s compliance with it, the administration has insisted repeatedly, are only a small part of the United States’s Iran policy review.