The Trump administration is keeping alive one of the last remaining components of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal by extending sanctions waivers that allow foreign companies to work with Iran\u2019s civilian nuclear program without US penalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The waivers had been due to expire Tuesday but were extended by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for another 90 days. The extensions were not announced until Thursday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Pompeo also announced new sanctions on Iran\u2019s construction sector, which he determines to be under the control of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC was designated earlier this year as a \u201cforeign terrorist organization.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said the move \u201cwill help preserve oversight of Iran\u2019s civil nuclear program, reduce proliferation risks, constrain Iran\u2019s ability to shorten its \u2018breakout time\u2019 to a nuclear weapon, and prevent the regime from reconstituting sites for proliferation-sensitive purposes.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trump withdrew last year from the nuclear deal and has steadily ramped up sanctions on Iran that had been eased under the agreement. But the so-called \u201ccivilian nuclear cooperation\u201d waivers will permit European, Russian and Chinese companies to continue to work at Iranian civilian nuclear facilities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nuclear deal critics, including Trump allies like Republican Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Tom Cotton of Arkansas, have long argued that the waivers should be revoked because they give Iran access to technology that could be used for weapons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Trump administration is keeping alive one of the last remaining components of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal by extending sanctions waivers that allow foreign companies to work with Iran\u2019s civilian nuclear program without US penalties. The waivers had been due to expire Tuesday but were extended by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for another […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":73517,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-73516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73518,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73516\/revisions\/73518"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/73517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}