Eli Lake, Columnist

Iran Gets Tillerson's Approval But It's Still on Notice

The secretary of state won a behind-the-scenes struggle over certifying Tehran's compliance with the nuclear deal.

April 19, 2017 at 6:38 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

He's less certain now.
Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Remember all those warnings not to normalize Donald Trump's presidency? Well, it looks like when it comes to Iran, the presidency has started to normalize Trump.

On Tuesday evening, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson certified that Iran was in compliance with the nuclear bargain negotiated by Trump's predecessor, Barack Obama, and five other powers. We are a long way from Trump's campaign rhetoric, when he said that deal was the worst deal in the history of deal-making.