Speaking today at the American Enterprise Institute, US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley insisted that President Trump could freely declare Iran in violation of the P5+1 nuclear deal whenever he wanted. She didn’t say he necessarily would.

Trump’s next deadline for certifying the deal to Congress would be mid-October, and Trump has already said he will declare Iran non-compliant at that point, despite the IAEA repeatedly declaring Iran compliant since then. Haley didn’t appear to see any problem with that.

Rather, Haley insisted that the questions of Iran following the letter of the deal was to get bogged down in “narrow technicalities,” and that it was time to move into the “big picture,” in which Iran can be declared in violation in some broad way.

Haley didn’t offer any factual violations, rather claiming Iran’s “long history of aggression” made it inherently in violation of the deal. She also false claiming Iran was violating a requirement to let the IAEA into its conventional military sites, despite the IAEA having already pointed out they can only visit such sites if there is evidence of activity there, and they have no such evidence, and moreover that they aren’t even seeking such access from Iran in the first place.

Haley also made note of Iran struggling to keep its heavy water stockpile below the cap, even though heavy water is not a proliferation risk, and the “cap” was meant to be in place to oblige the P5+1 to buy Iran’s access production due to the ongoing redesign of a heavy water reactor they were going to build. Indeed, the whole problem here was that after the US bought the first batch of heavy water, Congress was furious about it, and no one’s bought any since, leaving Iran stuck with it.