President Trump has long complained about the P5+1 nuclear deal with Iran, calling it the worst deal ever made, but today the semi-annual report Congress has mandated on Iran revealed that Trump will continue waiving sanctions as mandated under US participation in the deal.
This wasn’t entirely surprising, as despite Trump’s public grousing about the deal many had warned him against withdrawing from it, noting that the US withdrawing wouldn’t actually cancel the deal for the rest of the participants and if anything would harm the US diplomatically since Iran is complying with its obligations.
Still, the report in which the waiver was buried was overwhelmingly condemning Iran on various other issues, and in keeping with his effort to show hostility toward them, the Trump Administration imposed some new sanctions on Iran, and certain Chinese people, related to Iran’s non-nuclear missile program.
That’s likely going to allow the administration to present itself as attempting to keep the sanctions in place without withdrawing from the deal. It’s likely to also been seen by Iran as a violation of the spirit of the deal, because it is, as US officials cite a ban on nuclear-capable missile testing by Iran as justifying the sanctions, even though Iran doesn’t have any such program and is purely testing conventional missiles.
I wonder if there is a mechanism for Iran to challenge the illegal U.S. sanctions on their conventional ballistic missiles. It does more than violate the ‘spirit of the deal’ since it hinders their ability to trade with other countries. As a sovereign country, we have the right to hinder our trade but not impose restrictions on other countries.