Speaking from the White House Tuesday, Press Secretary Josh Earnest confirmed to reporters Iran's recent ballistic missile test likely violated United Nations sanctions.
"The missile test that we did see over the weekend, are, we've got strong indications those missile tests did violate UN Security Council rules that pertain to Iran's ballistic missile activities. Unfortunately that's not new. We have seen Iran on on, almost serially, violate the international community's concerns about their ballistic missile program and the UN Security Council resolution actually gives the international community some tools to interdict some equipment and material that could be used to advance their ballistic missile program and gives us the ability to work in concert with our partners around the world to engage a strategy to try to disrupt continued progress of their ballistic missile program," Earnest said .
Despite the likely violation, Earnest stressed that the White House believes the Iranian regime will uphold its obligations to the recently made nuclear agreement.
"This is altogether separate from the nuclear agreement that Iran reached with the rest of the world. In contrast to the repeated violations, of the the UN security resolution as it pertains to their ballistic missile activity, we've seen that Iran over the past couple of years has demonstrated a track record of abiding by the commitments being made in the context of the nuclear talks," Earnest said, admitting Iran had used previous nuclear talks over the years as a distraction and cover for the advancement of their nuclear program. "We have been saying all along that the nuclear agreement Iran reached with the rest of the world will not be predicated on trust, but it will be predicated on the most robust, intrusive set of inspections that have ever been imposed on a country's nuclear program."
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