Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday verified to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) that Iran has been complying with the 2015 nuclear agreement. However, according to a Wall Street Journal report, the Administration may not continue its support for the same deal.
Tillerson noted that President Donald Trump may not continue to withhold US sanctions against Iran, despite its compliance, because of its destabilizing role as terror sponsor across the Middle East: “Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods,” he wrote. “President Donald J. Trump has directed a National Security Council-led interagency review […] that will evaluate whether suspension of sanctions related to Iran pursuant to the [nuclear deal] is vital to the national security interests of the United States.”
On Monday, Foreign Policy reported that the Trump administration was considering increasing current US sanctions against Iran.
Vladimir Voronkov, Russia’s permanent representative to the International Organizations in Vienna, told TASS on Tuesday that US banks do not work effectively to unfreeze Iranian assets. “I think that the role of financial institutions in the implementation of the agreement will be a very burning issue,” he said, adding, “Now the process of unfreezing economic relations against Iran is going on as part of lifting of multilateral sanctions. But the US banks are not active enough and don’t work effectively on providing financial mechanisms for this process.”
Voronkov also stated that US economic sanctions against Iran “create an unfavorable climate.”