Trump administration officials vilify JCPOA

Rasa - The United States is boosting the narrative of US President Donald Trump against the Iran nuclear deal, negotiated under his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.

News ID: 429058

Date: 20 April 2017 - 23:31

RNA - As a Republican candidate, Trump kept censuring Obama for taking part in negotiations with Tehran along with five other world powers, calling the outcome of the nuclear talks “one of the worst deals,” the New York businessman has ever seen.

Trump administration officials unleashed a new attack against the deal, dubbed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by repeating baseless allegations against Tehran on Wednesday.

US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil, argued that "the JCPOA fails to achieve the objective of a non-nuclear Iran."

Both before and after the talks, Tehran has maintained that such negotiations are solely in regard to Iran’s nuclear program.

Tillerson further repeated a defunct US accusation that Iran’s nuclear program is not peaceful, claiming that the deal “only delays their goal of becoming a nuclear state."

Trump’s chief of the US foreign policy apparatus certified to US Congress a day earlier that Iran has remained committed to JCPOA, adding that the US administration is engaged in a full review of the agreement.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer defended the review on Wednesday, arguing that the measure is a “prudent” one.

"I think he's doing the prudent thing by asking for a review of the current deal and what's happening," Spicer (pictured above) said of a recent Trump call on his National Security Council for a review.

The White House spokesman further announced that the review would supposedly check if the anti-Iran sanctions ease, required under the JCPOA, is "vital to our national security interests."

The Trump administration’s anti-Iran rhetoric in part reflects the New York businessman’s long-held grudge for his predecessor, who threw his support behind talks between Iran and the world powers, which finally yielded the nuclear deal in 2015.

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