State Department official says US not looking to renegotiate Iran deal

The State Department’s top nonproliferation official said Wednesday that the U.S. is not looking to reopen negotiations on the Iran nuclear deal and instead hopes to strike a supplemental agreement to fix existing flaws.

“We are not aiming to renegotiate the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] or reopen it or change its terms,” U.S. nonproliferation envoy Christopher Ford told reporters in Geneva, according to Reuters.

“We are seeking a supplemental agreement that would in some fashion layer upon it a series of additional rules — restrictions, terms, parameters, whatever you want to call it — that help answer these challenges more effectively.”

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Ford’s comments came as President Trump faces a May 12 deadline to determine whether the U.S. will remain in the 2015 deal, which seeks to curb Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief.

Trump has long railed against the Obama-era deal, arguing that it does not permanently block Iran’s path to obtaining nuclear weapons and allows the country to manufacture intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron vowed this week to do more to reel in Iran’s activities in the Middle East. Macron spoke to Trump about a new pact that would seek to address concerns outside of Iran’s nuclear program.

Macron and other European leaders have pressed Trump not to withdraw from the nuclear deal out of fear that it could otherwise collapse.

Trump moved in October to decertify Iran’s compliance with the deal, but stopped short of withdrawing from it altogether. Instead, he called for negotiators to patch up what he has deemed holes in the agreement while insisting that he could still choose to pull out of the agreement if his demands were not met.