Thomas M. Countryman: “This Agreement is an example of the strength of our bilateral relationship.”

We believe that, through JCPOA, Iran has given up its ambition of a nuclear weapon and has submitted to an international structure of intervention and compliance.

We have become, I would say, dangerously uncompetitive on the nuclear sphere when we cannot compete with countries like the French and the Russians.

This agreement advances the primary goal we have in every 123 agreement, which is strengthening the longstanding nonproliferation policy of successive administrations.

We would argue that any effort to step away from JCPOA would reopen a Pandora's box in that region that we do not think we could close again.