National Security Advisor John Bolton said that the US had no recourse other than to abandon the Iran nuclear deal. "Look, this deal was fundamentally flawed, as the President said. It does not do what it purports to do," Bolton told reporters.
"It does not prevent Iran from developing deliverable nuclear weapons. It allows Iran to continue technologies like uranium enrichment, reprocessing of plutonium. It allows them -- even if they're in compliance with the deal -- to increase their research and development on the sophistication of their nuclear capabilities. And it simply has an utterly inadequate treatment of the military dimension of Iran's aspirations."
Contrary to basic arms control agreement practice, there was never a baseline declaration. In fact, Iran has consistently denied it ever had a military program. That's enshrined in Security Council Resolution 2231. And as we've seen from the data that we've collected before, that Israel discussed last week, this is a flat line. Nor is there an adequate inspection provision in the agreement itself, ever to allow us to have confidence that we've detected all of Iran's nuclear-related activities.