Iran warns U.S. that its nuclear effort can be restarted

TEHRAN, Iran — Iran’s president on Tuesday warned it could restart its nuclear program “within hours or days” if the Trump administration continued its confrontational policies toward the Islamic Republic.

President Hassan Rouhani’s remarks were a direct response to Trump’s increasingly bellicose rhetoric toward Iran and his announcement of fresh sanctions on individuals and businesses connected to Iran’s ballistic missile program.

Trump has also pledged to undo the 2015 agreement that Iran signed with the United States and five other world powers under which it suspended activities that could have led to the production of a nuclear bomb in exchange for a sharp reduction in international sanctions that had hammered its economy.

Rouhani told lawmakers in Iran that “sanctions and bullying” by Trump administration officials were the type of “failed policies that forced their predecessors to the negotiating table” to reach the landmark nuclear deal, one of the Obama administration’s signature foreign policy achievements.

Rouhani said Iran could quickly resume its nuclear activities and increase its quantities of enriched uranium — a precursor to building a nuclear bomb — to levels higher than before the agreement.

Rouhani has staked his presidency on the nuclear deal, and won re-election this year in part because the pact remains widely popular in Iran, even among anti-Western hard-liners who believe it averted a military confrontation with the U.S.