Sen. Corker urges Trump to ‘strongly enforce’ Iran nuclear deal

President-elect Donald Trump, who vowed on the campaign trail to rip up the Iranian nuclear treaty, should do more to enforce the agreement rather than discard it right away, U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., said Monday.

Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and a critic of the deal that outgoing President Barack Obama negotiated with Tehran leaders last year, said he expects the incoming Trump administration should and will do more to police what he said were ongoing violations of the pact by the Iranian government. But since the U.S. government and its allies have already returned billions of dollars of once-frozen assets to Iran, Corker cautioned against reneging on the agreement once Trump is sworn into office in January.

“I don’t think that [throwing out the deal) is a very good place to start,” Corker told reporters in his hometown of Chattanooga. “If you tear the agreement up on the front end, it’s almost like cutting your nose off to spite your face because they already have assess to all of their dollars.”

In a speech in March to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, Trump called the Iranian nuclear deal “a disaster” and “the worst deal ever negotiated.” Although Obama touted the pact as a way to limit nuclear bomb development by the Iranians, Trump warned the agreement could lead to “a nuclear holocaust” by giving the Iranians more cash and the ability to trade with more nations.

Corker worked to delay implementation of the deal and to give Congress the ability to weigh in on the agreement last year, but the nuclear deal was still adopted as a political commitment rather than a treaty ratified by lawmakers. That means the agreement is vulnerable to a new U.S. president, such as Trump, who could try to change its terms.