Trump told reporters at the White House he was sending US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to notify the United Nations Security Council that the US intends to restore virtually all suspended sanctions on Iran.
“It’s a snapback," Trump said. "Not uncommon.”
He called the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), which lowered sanctions on Iran in exchange for it accepting strict limits on its nuclear power program that would preclude it from developing an offensive weapon, a product of the “Obama-Biden foreign policy failure.” Trump claimed the money Iran got during the reprieve, including $1.7 billion in a Foreign Military Sales trust fund plus interest, helped Iran to fund terrorist groups across the Middle East, including al-Qaeda.
Last week, the UN Security Council failed to pass a draft resolution that would have extended arms-related restrictions on Iran imposed under UNSC Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal.
According to Trump, the US has the ability to invoke the "snapback" dispute-solving mechanism in Resolution 2231, which will automatically re-impose the sanctions if the Security Council fails to take positive action to extend the reprieve.
Trump asserted on Wednesday that if he wins reelection in November, Iran will be rushing to make a new deal.
"If and when I win the election, within the first month, Iran will come to us and they are going to be asking for a deal so quickly cause they are doing very poorly," Trump said.
"Mark it down," Trump said. "Iran will never have a nuclear weapon."
Trump also asserted that "a good deal was the deal we made with UAE and Israel" and said other countries “want to come into that deal. He later told a reporter who asked for clarification that Emirati ally Saudi Arabia was one such country he envisioned joining the peace deal.
"I see a lot of countries coming in fairly quickly, and when you have them all in, ultimately Iran will come in, too," Trump said. "There'll be peace in the Middle East,” he said, adding it wouldn’t have happened under the JCPOA.