Senior administration officials are pushing to harden Iran policy without destroying a historic nuclear deal with Iran that US president Donald Trump has called an “embarrassment” and threatened to scrap.
Mr Trump has until October 15 to announce whether he will recertify the 2015 deal, in which Iran agreed to limit its nuclear programme in exchange for limited sanctions relief. The deal was signed by seven countries and endorsed by the UN Security Council.
A senior administration official told the Financial Times that despite Mr Trump’s disdain for the deal, he still retains some hope he can fix the agreement without getting out of it, and that no decision on how to handle the upcoming certification deadline has yet been made.