WASHINGTON (AFP) - Donald Trump backed away from a campaign promise to scrap a major nuclear security deal with Iran on Tuesday, with officials announcing the agreement and related sanctions relief will stay in place for now.

Under the terms of the two-year-old agreement, Tehran scaled back production of nuke-making material in return for massive sanctions relief.

The Trump administration faced a new congressional deadline on Monday to say whether Iran has curbed its nuclear weapons programme in line with the accord.

"The conditions have been met, based on information available to the United States," according to one official who the White House would not name publicly. The 2015 agreement rests on a series of technical benchmarks, and was seen in Washington as a way of avoiding military action to prevent Iran from getting a nuke.

But it has not relieved tensions between Tehran and Washington, which continue to clash particularly over conflicts in the Middle East like Syria and Yemen, where Iran-backed militias hold clout.

During his election campaign, Trump denounced the Obama-era deal, promising to renegotiate it and vowing to get tough on Iran.

Trump has now twice affirmed Iran's compliance since taking office - effectively keeping the deal in place.

But the White House took pains to stress it was not going soft on Iran, pointing to new non-nuclear sanctions and stricter implementation of the deal.

An official added: "we do expect that we will be implementing new sanctions that pertain to Iran's ballistic missile programme and fast boat programme." "Iran remains one of the most dangerous threats to US interests and regional stability," the official said.

A steely view of Iran binds Trump's national security team, which at times appear to have little else in common.

Many in Trump's cabinet tangled with Iran-backed militias during the US occupation of Iraq.

Ex-Marines like Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and Defence Secretary Jim Mattis also keenly remember Iran-backed Hezbollah's attack on the corps barracks in Lebanon in 1983.

Top among the list of concerns today are improved Iranian missile capabilities, support for the Syrian government, human rights abuses and the detention of Americans.

Xiyue Wang, a 37-year-old Chinese-American researcher at Princeton University, was recently sentenced to 10 years in Iranian prison.

"The president and the secretary of state judge that these Iranian activities severely undermine the intent of the (agreement), which was to contribute to regional and international peace and security," one official said.

"As a result the president and the secretary of state and the entire administration judged that Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit" of the accord, the official added.

For its part, Iran's complains of non-US compliance, accusing the US administration of failing to lift sanctions in line with the deal.</s>The U.S. has certified with Congress that Iran is legally in compliance on the nuclear deal, but senior Trump administration officials said both Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and President Donald Trump will couch that certification with an accusation that Iran is “unquestionably in default of the spirit of the [agreement].”

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The officials pointed to “a range of malign activities” including Iran’s ballistic missile development, support of militant groups in the region and Syria's Assad regime, its hostility to Israel and its continued detention of foreigners including U.S. citizens.

The officials said that moving forward the administration will “employ a strategy” that seeks to address Iran’s aggressive behavior in the region.

They did not specifically outline any measures they would press for but said they expect to implement new sanctions in the near future targeting Iran’s ballistic missile program and other “misbehavior” in the region.

In addition, the officials said they would seek to strengthen their relationships with partners in the region to “identify areas of ambiguity” that Iran has sought to take advantage of to potentially skirt parts of the deal.

The Trump administration's announcement tonight was part of an obligation the U.S. has under the deal to certify every 90 days that Iran is complying with the agreement. The last time the administration announced its certification of Iran's compliance, Secretary Tillerson blasted the country for its behavior in the region and said the Trump administration will address the agreement's failures to contain Iran.

Earlier Monday evening, the Foreign Minister of Iran, Mohammed Javad Zarif, took questions while at the Council on Foreign Relations and defended his country's compliance with the deal.

"I think our compliance is rather straightforward because it’s not for guessing whether we have complied or not," Zarif said. "That is very clear, in black and white in the reports of the [International Atomic Energy Agency] which is hardly a sympathizer of Iran. That’s so you don’t need to ask me whether we’ve complied."

Zarif continued that Iran believes that for the U.S., including under the Obama administration, it is "more important to maintain the sanctions that remain rather than remove the sanctions."

He also argued that U.S. sanctions do not work, saying, "Let me tell you something, the United States should reconsider its approach to sanctions. Sanctions have never been an asset for the United States ... When the U.S. government started to impose nuclear sanctions on Iran we only had 200 centrifuges. When they started negotiating with us in order to remove those sanctions, we had 20,000 centrifuges. So if you want to see the result of sanctions – just 19,800 centrifuges is the net result of sanctions. So sanctions do not produce outcome."

ABC News' Conor Finnegan and Ely Brown contributed to this report.</s>Washington: President Donald Trump`s administration on Monday declared that Iran was complying with its nuclear agreement with world powers, but warned that Tehran was in default of the spirit of the accord and that Washington would look for ways to strengthen it.

It was the second time Trump certified Iranian compliance with the agreement since he took office in January, despite criticizing it during the 2016 campaign as "the worst deal ever."

Trump administration officials, briefing reporters on Monday on the decision, said new economic sanctions against Iran were being prepared over its ballistic missile program and for contributing to regional tensions.

Under U.S. law, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days of Iran`s compliance with the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump had faced a congressionally mandated deadline of Monday to decide.

A senior administration official said Iran was judged in compliance of the 2015 nuclear deal but that Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson believed Iran "remains one of the most dangerous threats to U.S. interests and to regional stability."

The official ticked off a list of accusations about Iranian behavior in the region, including ballistic missile development and proliferation, support for terrorism and militancy, complicity in atrocities committed in Syria and threats to Gulf waterways.

"The president and the secretary of state judge that these Iranian activities severely undermine the intent of the JCPOA, which was to contribute to regional and international peace and security. As a result, the president, the secretary of state and the entire administration judge that Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit of the JCPOA," the official said.</s>Washington: The US has said that Iran is continuing to comply with the terms of the nuclear deal that curbed Tehran`s nuclear programme in exchange for sanctions` relief, the media reported.

But the Trump administration on Monday coupled its certification to Congress of Iran`s compliance with a blistering critique of the country`s non-nuclear activities, saying Iran is "unquestionably in default of the spirit" of the deal, reports CNN.

The US is also considering additional sanctions against Iranian entities to target the country`s ballistic missile programme and state sponsorship of terrorism, two items not covered by the deal, a senior administration official told CNN.

"The Secretary of State and the President intends to emphasise that Iran remains one of the most dangerous threats to the US and to regional security," the official said,

"Moving forward, the administration intends to employ a strategy that will address the totality of Iran`s malign behaviour and not just focus on the nuclear deal."

Meanwhile, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said earlier on Monday that Iran has received "contradictory signals" from the Trump administration and confirmed he has had no contact with his American counterpart, Rex Tillerson, CNN reported.

Zarif argued the US`s failure to build on the foundation of trust created by the Iran nuclear deal suggests "US hostility to Iran will not end".

While he has never spoken with Tillerson, Zarif said lower-level talks on the implementation of the Iran deal continue.</s>WASHINGTON - The Trump administration told Congress for a second time Monday that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal and can keep enjoying sanctions relief, even as it insisted Tehran would face consequences for breaching "the spirit" of the deal.

President Donald Trump, who lambasted the 2015 pact as a candidate, gave himself more time to decide whether to scuttle it or let it stand. Instead, senior Trump administration officials sought to emphasize their deep concerns about Iran's non-nuclear behavior and vowed that those transgressions won't go unpunished.

In a shift from Trump's previous threat to "rip up" the deal, officials said the administration was working with U.S. allies to try to fix the deal's flaws, including the expiration of some nuclear restrictions after a decade or more. The officials also said the U.S. would slap Tehran with new sanctions penalizing it for developing ballistic missiles and other activity.

Trump, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and "the entire administration judge that Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit" of the agreement, one official said. That assessment carries no legal force, while Trump's certification that Iran is technically complying clears the way for sanctions to remain lifted.

The late-night announcement capped a day of frenzied, last-minute decision-making by the president, exposing deep and lingering divisions within his administration about how to deal with a top national security issue.

Since early last week, Trump's administration had been prepared to make the certification, a quarterly requirement. Trump first told Congress in April that Iran was indeed complying. With no final decision on his broader Iran policy, the White House had planned to let the status quo stand for another three months.

As planned, a public rollout began Monday morning involving close choreography among the White House, the State Department and other parts of government. The White House National Security Council distributed talking points to other agencies while national security adviser H.R. McMaster and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin briefed outside policy experts who frequently comment on such issues in the media.

Then, just as the White House was preparing to brief reporters, the announcement was abruptly halted and the talking points temporarily recalled as the president reconsidered the decision, according to officials and others briefed by the administration. Among the options Trump discussed with Tillerson and other aides was to extend the sanctions relief but refuse to certify Iran's compliance, several officials said.

With a midnight deadline just hours away, officials disclosed the final decision to reporters on a chaotic conference call on the condition that it not be published until the White House had a chance to formally notify Congress.

Ultimately, the president's decision was the same on the substance to what his administration had been planning all along. Although the language was toughened to add the declaration that Iran is "in default of the spirit" of the deal, Iran will continue receiving the same sanctions relief that it did under former President Barack Obama.

In April, when Trump made his first certification, he paired it with new sanctions for non-nuclear behavior to show there was no softening of his stance toward the Islamic Republic. Earlier Monday, the White House had told outside experts it would repeat that playbook, by punishing more than a dozen Iranian individuals, organizations and procurement networks involved in ballistic missiles and other nefarious behavior.

But the day came and went with no such announcement, although officials said they expected more sanctions would eventually be coming. It was unclear why the administration held off or for how long, but typically the Treasury Department prefers to issue new sanctions during business hours.

"We receive contradictory signals," Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations before the decision was announced. "So we don't know which one to interpret in what way."

For Trump, a vocal critic of the deal, the obligation to report to Congress on Iran's conformity has created an unwelcome, tri-monthly headache. Still undecided about whether to withdraw from the deal, Trump must either vouch for Tehran's compliance or try to claim Iran is breaching it — even though the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors the deal says it is not.

In its condemnation of Iran, senior officials emphasized several longstanding U.S. concerns about Iran's ballistic missile programs, human rights abuses and support for terrorism in the region. They also criticized Iran for detaining U.S. citizens and limiting freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf.

Under the deal struck by Obama and other world leaders, Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program — long suspected of being aimed at developing atomic weapons — in return for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. The deal does not address global concerns about Iran's non-nuclear activities, but also doesn't prevent the U.S. and others from punishing Iran for those activities. Iran remains on the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism for its support of anti-Israel groups.

Scuttling the deal would put further distance between Trump and foreign leaders who are already upset over his move to withdraw from the Paris global climate change accord. Other powers that brokered the nuclear deal along with the U.S. have said there's no appetite for renegotiating it.</s>The Trump administration has told Congress for a second time that Iran is complying with the nuclear deal and can keep enjoying sanctions relief, even as it insisted Tehran would face consequences for breaching “the spirit” of the deal.

President Donald Trump, who lambasted the 2015 pact as a candidate, gave himself more time to decide whether to dismantle it or let it stand. Instead, senior Trump administration officials sought to emphasise their deep concerns about Iran’s non-nuclear behaviour, saying transgressions won’t go unpunished.

In a shift from Trump’s previous threat to “rip up” the deal, officials said the administration was working with US allies to try to fix the deal’s flaws, including the expiration of some nuclear restrictions after a decade or more. The officials also said the US would slap Tehran with new sanctions penalising it for developing ballistic missiles and other activity.

Trump, secretary of state Rex Tillerson and “the entire administration judge that Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit” of the agreement, one official said. That assessment carries no legal force, while Trump’s certification that Iran is technically complying clears the way for sanctions to remain lifted.

The late-night announcement capped a day of frenzied, last-minute decision-making by the president, exposing deep and lingering divisions within his administration about how to deal with a top national security issue.

Since early last week, Trump’s administration had been prepared to make the certification, a quarterly requirement. Trump first told Congress in April that Iran was indeed complying. With no final decision on his broader Iran policy, the White House had planned to let the status quo stand for another three months.

Iran will continue receiving the same sanctions relief that it did under former President Barack Obama.

In April, when Trump made his first certification, he paired it with new sanctions for non-nuclear behaviour to show there was no softening of his stance toward the Islamic Republic. Earlier on Monday, the White House had told outside experts it would repeat that playbook, by punishing more than a dozen Iranian individuals, organisations and procurement networks involved in ballistic missiles and other nefarious behaviour.

But the day came and went with no such announcement, although officials said they expected more sanctions would eventually be coming. It was unclear why the administration held off or for how long, but typically the treasury department prefers to issue new sanctions during business hours.

“We receive contradictory signals,” Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said Monday at the Council on Foreign Relations before the decision was announced. “So we don’t know which one to interpret in what way.”

For Trump, a vocal critic of the deal, the obligation to report to Congress on Iran’s conformity has created an unwelcome, tri-monthly headache. Still undecided about whether to withdraw from the deal, Trump must either vouch for Tehran’s compliance or try to claim Iran is breaching it — even though the International Atomic Energy Agency that monitors the deal says it is not.

In its condemnation of Iran, senior officials emphasised several longstanding US concerns about Iran’s ballistic missile programs, human rights abuses and support for terrorism in the region. They also criticised Iran for detaining US citizens and limiting freedom of navigation in the Persian Gulf.

Under the deal struck by Obama and other world leaders, Iran agreed to roll back its nuclear program — long suspected of being aimed at developing atomic weapons — in return for billions of dollars in sanctions relief. The deal does not address global concerns about Iran’s non-nuclear activities, but also doesn’t prevent the US and others from punishing Iran for those activities. Iran remains on the state department’s list of state sponsors of terrorism for its support of anti-Israel groups.

Scuttling the deal would put further distance between Trump and foreign leaders who are already upset over his move to withdraw from the Paris global climate change accord. Other powers that brokered the nuclear deal along with the US have said there’s no appetite for renegotiating it.</s>But the Trump administration coupled its certification to Congress of Iran's compliance with a blistering critique of Iran's non-nuclear activities, saying Iran is "unquestionably in default of the spirit" of the deal.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson issued a similar critique earlier this year when the US certified the deal for the first time since President Donald Trump, a fierce critique of the deal, took office.

The US is also considering additional sanctions against Iranian entities to target the country's ballistic missile program and state sponsorship of terrorism, two items not covered by the deal, a senior administration official said.

"The secretary of state -- and the President -- intends to emphasize that Iran remains one of the most dangerous threats to the US and to regional security," another senior administration official said before ticking through a list of a half-dozen areas where Iran remains a destabilizing force. "Moving forward, the administration intends to employ a strategy that will address the totality of Iran's malign behavior and not just focus on the nuclear deal."

READ MORE: Trump administration expected to certify Iran is compliant with Obama's nuclear deal The Trump administration is also exploring ways to strengthen enforcement of the deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, by working with allies to interpret its provisions more stringently, three senior administration officials said on a call with reporters Monday. The officials said that, in particular, the United States' European allies "want to work with us to interpret the agreement more strictly. The deal, though, rests not just on the US and those European allies -- France, the United Kingdom and Germany -- but also on China and Russia. Haley on Russia sanctions: Nothing off table Haley on Russia sanctions: Nothing off table But despite the tough rhetoric, the Trump administration offered no immediate actions to counter the charges of destabilizing behavior it leveled against Iran, straying far from the harder line Trump has long promised he would take against the country -- including his calls on the campaign trail for the US to tear up or renegotiate a deal he decried as "the worst deal ever." Now, Trump is certifying the very deal that he blasted on the campaign trail for the second time of his presidency, extending the sanctions relief granted to Iran under the agreement. The US must certify to Congress every 90 days that Iran is complying with the deal, which was brokered two years ago by President Barack Obama's administration. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said earlier on Monday that Iran has received "contradictory signals" from the Trump administration and confirmed he has had no contact with his American counterpart, Rex Tillerson. Zarif said that Iran's compliance with the nuclear deal is "straightforward" and "black and white," and questioned whether US authorities were deliberately dragging their feet in an effort to keep companies out of the Iranian market, referring to the United States' compliance with the sanctions relief portion of the deal. Zarif argued the United States' failure to build on the foundation of trust created by the Iran nuclear deal suggests "US hostility to Iran will not end." While he has never spoken with Tillerson, Zarif said lower-level talks on the implementation of the Iran deal continue.</s>The Trump Administration has been very clear from the start that Iran is among the list of nations they’d very much like to pick a fight with, and today reiterated how unhappy they are with the P5+1 nuclear deal, though they were ultimately forced to concede that Iran is complying with it.

While grousing about what a “bad deal” they believe it was, Trump Administration officials accused Iran of having violated “the spirit” of the deal, offering absolutely no details on what that even means, or how the administration,which has repeatedly gone on record as not liking the deal in the first place, interprets that spirit.

It’s a problematic position, but mostly boils down to the Trump Administration being keen to have some excuse to “rip up” the nuclear deal as they’d long threatened to do, and being incredibly annoyed at the fact that they don’t have a pretext to do so.

This has officials publicly admitting that Iran is complying with the deal, and threatening new sanctions against them anyhow, because that compliance “won’t go unpunished.” This is a confusing position that’s likely to be a problem for the other P5+1 members, who already see the US, and not Iran as the weak link in the deal.

Even more puzzled that those partner nations however is Iran, whose Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was very public about how his government is having a heck of a time parsing the various mixed signals from the United States as any sort of coherent policy, let alone how to proscribe a policy for themselves that won’t lead to the US being furious at them.</s>WASHINGTON, July 18 (Reuters) - President Donald Trump's administration on Monday declared that Iran was complying with its nuclear agreement with world powers, but warned that Tehran was in default of the spirit of the accord and that Washington would look for ways to strengthen it.

It was the second time Trump certified Iranian compliance with the agreement since he took office in January, despite criticizing it during the 2016 campaign as "the worst deal ever."

Trump administration officials, briefing reporters on Monday on the decision, said new economic sanctions against Iran were being prepared over its ballistic missile program and for contributing to regional tensions.

Under U.S. law, the State Department must notify Congress every 90 days of Iran's compliance with the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Trump had faced a congressionally mandated deadline of Monday to decide.

A senior administration official said Iran was judged in compliance of the 2015 nuclear deal but that Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson believed Iran "remains one of the most dangerous threats to U.S. interests and to regional stability."

The official ticked off a list of accusations about Iranian behavior in the region, including ballistic missile development and proliferation, support for terrorism and militancy, complicity in atrocities committed in Syria and threats to Gulf waterways.

"The president and the secretary of state judge that these Iranian activities severely undermine the intent of the JCPOA, which was to contribute to regional and international peace and security. As a result, the president, the secretary of state and the entire administration judge that Iran is unquestionably in default of the spirit of the JCPOA," the official said.

The landmark deal struck with Iran by the United States, France, Britain, Russia, China and Germany is aimed at preventing Tehran from developing a nuclear weapon by imposing time-limited restrictions and strict international monitoring on its nuclear program. In return, Tehran won relief from punishing international economic sanctions.

Iran denies seeking nuclear arms. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, concluded in December 2015, however, that Iran worked on the design of a missile-borne nuclear warhead until 2009.

While lifting nuclear-linked sanctions, the United States maintains sanctions related to Iran's ballistic missile program, human rights record and what Washington charges is its support for international terrorism.

The senior administration official said the Trump administration intended to employ a strategy that would "address the totality of Iran's malign behavior" and not just focus on the Iran nuclear agreement.

The administration is also looking at ways to strengthen the nuclear deal and more strictly enforce it, the official said, citing concerns that the deal over time would let Iran openly pursue industrial-scale nuclear fuel enrichment.

"We're in a period where we´re going to be working with our allies to explore options for addressing the JCPOA's flaws, which there are many," the official said. (Reporting by Steve Holland; Editing by Peter Cooney)</s>The United States is imposing new sanctions against 18 individuals and entities over their support for Iran's ballistic missile program and other military-related activities.

The sanctions come one day after Washington certified that Iran is complying with the 2015 nuclear deal and will continue to receive nuclear-related sanctions relief.

The U.S. Department of Treasury said in a statement on July 18 it was targeting 16 entities and individuals for ”engaging in support of illicit Iranian actors or transnational criminal activity.”

Those sanctioned have supported Iran's military or the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) by developing military equipment, producing and maintaining fast-attack boats, and procuring electronic components, the treasury said.

"This Administration will continue to aggressively target Iran's malign activity, including their ongoing state support of terrorism, ballistic missile program, and human rights abuses," Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin was quoted as saying in the statement.

The State Department also said it is designating two Iranian organizations involved in Iran’s ballistic missile program.

State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said Iran was testing and developing ballistic missiles "in direct defiance" of a UN Security Council resolution.

The new sanctions were "in response to these continued Iranian threats," she said in a July 18 statement.

The State Department called on Iran to release U.S. citizens including Baquer Namazi, Siamak Namazi, and Xiyue Wang whose arrest and prison sentence on espionage charges was announced by a judiciary spokesman over the weekend.

With reporting by Reuters and dpa
The White House tells U.S. Congress that Iran is complying with its nuclear deal, and promises to impose new sanctions on Iran's ballistic missile program.