House Speaker calls to ‘rigorously enforce’ Iran nuclear deal

Speaker of the House Paul Ryan spoke of “rigorously enforcing” the current Iran nuclear deal instead of scrapping it, despite expressing support for further sanctions on the Islamic Republic.

Despite having supported further sanctions against Iran earlier this week, Speaker of the US House of Representatives (Republican) Paul Ryan stressed his belief in the need to “rigorously enforce,” and not scrap, the Iran nuclear agreement reached in 2015 between the Islamic Republic and the P5+1 powers (US, UK, Germany, France, Russia and China).

“I think the key is to rigorously enforce this deal,” Ryan said in an interview aired on Sunday with NBC’s “Meet The Press,” noting that international sanctions imposed against Iran between 2006 and 2015 were already lifted by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the Iran nuclear agreement.

“I never supported the deal in the first place. I thought it was a huge mistake, but the multilateral sanctions are done,” Ryan stated. “I don’t think you’re going to go back and reconstitute the multilateral sanctions that were in place.”

The Trump administration has put Iran “on notice” for its suspected non-compliance with the nuclear agreement and placed new sanctions on Iranian individuals and companies. Other Republican members of Congress have also backed Trump’s efforts to rein in Iran.

“We need to have a tough-on-Iran policy,” Ryan said on Thursday. “Iran, don’t forget, is the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”

By: Jonathan Benedek, World Israel News

Iran nuclear dealIran sanctionsPaul Ryan