Paul Ryan: Enforce the Iran nuclear deal, don’t dismantle it

WASHINGTON – It makes more sense to rigorously enforce the Iran nuclear deal than to dismantle it, says Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, the Speaker of the US House of Representatives, signaling diminishing support for pulling the United States out of the deal.

Ryan, speaking on “Meet the Press” in an interview to be broadcast in full on Sunday, says the removal of sanctions under the nuclear rollback for sanctions relief deal reached in 2015 between Iran and six major world powers, meant it would be too hard to reconstitute the sanctions.

“A lot of that toothpaste is already out of the tube,” he said in a segment of the interview NBC posted on its website on Friday. “I never supported the deal in the first place, I thought it was a huge mistake, but the multilateral sanctions are done. I don’t think you’re going to go back and reconstitute the multilateral sanctions that were in place.”

President Donald Trump said while campaigning that the deal was a bad one and at times suggested that he would pull out of it. Other Republicans throughout the campaign pledged to kill the deal. However, since Trump’s inauguration last month, his defense secretary, James Mattis, has said pulling out of the deal would be unwise.

“I think we would expend our effort where it can pay off the most and that’s why I think what they’re doing now does make a lot of sense,” Ryan says. “I think the key is to rigorously enforce this deal.”

— JTA