As this Committee is well aware, for several years Iran resisted and refused multiple opportunities to engage in a meaningful fashion. And so, as we made clear from the outset, the Administration, working alongside our international partners, has imposed on Iran the most comprehensive, powerful and effective set of sanctions in history. Today, Iran stands isolated from the international banking and financial system with slashed oil revenues, a withering energy production infrastructure, and a significantly diminished economy.

The enormous pressure presently applied on the Iranian economy did not come about overnight. We have worked hand-in-hand with Congress — including with this Committee — to construct a complex and comprehensive set of sanctions that focuses on those supporting Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs and, more broadly, Iran's key sources of economic strength. We maximized the impact and efficacy of our sanctions framework through robust engagement and outreach to foreign governments and the private sector. And we have aggressively enforced these sanctions by targeting illicit actors and their networks both inside and outside Iran.

While sanctions have proved to be a very potent tool, we have not imposed sanctions for sanctions' sake. One of the key purposes of sanctions always has been to induce a shift in the policy calculus of the Iranian government and to build the necessary leverage for serious negotiations about Iran's nuclear program.

Our dual-track strategy has begun to bear fruit. Sanctions pressure brought Iran to the negotiating table in Geneva and provided our negotiators with bargaining power to secure important limitations on Irna's nuclear program in the JPA. These limitations are the first meaningful limits Iran has accepted on its nuclear program in nearly a decade. But the deal is only a first step.
 
The limitations on Iran's nuclear program under the JPA create the time and space to test whether Iran is prepared to negotiate a comprehensive, solution that would give us assurance that Iran is not producing a nuclear weapon. Over the next six months, while we test this proposition, we will continue to apply intense pressure on Iran's economy by aggressively enforcing the vast majority of our sanctions that will remain in place. Unless Iran takes concrete and verifiable steps to prove that its nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, it will face increasing sanctions pressure and deeper isolation.