Iran's mullahs will stop at nothing to get their hands on nuclear weapons to spread terror.  Just look at how broad the evidence is.

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson in his letter to House speaker Paul Ryan on April 19 said that although Iran is meeting the terms of 2015 nuclear deal with Obama administration and five other world powers, "Iran remains a leading state sponsor of terror through many platforms and methods." 

"Buying off" Iran with a flawed nuclear deal was not "a prudent way" to be deal with the Islamic Republic, Tillerson said.

Tillerson also said:

"This deal represents the same failed approach of the past that brought us to the current imminent threat we face from North Korea. The Trump administration has no intention of passing the buck to a future administration on Iran. The evidence is clear Iran's provocative actions threaten the United States, the region and the world."

In his press briefing, he touched on a number of issues with Iran, blasting the regime for meddling in the internal affairs of countries in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, and condemning its "alarming ongoing provocations" to destabilize countries in the region as the Trump administration launched a review of its policy toward Iran.

He said the U.S. would review the 2015 nuclear deal and, at same time, Iran's "behavior in the Middle East which undermines U.S. interests in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Lebanon."

His tough message for Iran was matched by those of U.S. secretary of defense Jim Mattis, who said on a visit to Saudi Arabia on April 19 that Iran's destabilizing influence would have to be overcome to end the conflict in Yemen.

As Secretary Tillerson pointed out in his press briefing, the deal has major flaws simply because the Obama administration was so focused on getting the deal signed and left the control mechanisms ineffective.

The Iranian regime's president, Hassan Rouhani, has said all along that with all its loopholes, the deal has provided the regime the capacity to advance its dubious nuclear activities under the nose of its U.N. nuclear watchdog.

A Weekly Standard piece on April 18 quoted Iranian officials as saying:

The nuclear deal enabled the country to make progress in developing advanced centrifuges, and broad production of some advanced models has already begun in the year since the deal was implemented, per Iranian media.

According to the report, a top proliferation expert said:

The nature of these activities indicates that Tehran is likely looking to develop the technology as part of a nuclear weapons program.

In the same piece, David Albright, founder of the Institute for Science and International Security said:

Unless of course the ultimate goal is nuclear weapons. Then the amount of money does not matter.

Rouhani recently said the deal enabled Iran to develop advanced uranium enrichment technology.

"Critics had been too pessimistic about the restrictions … on our nuclear industry," he said, according to comments published in Iranian media. "We opted for a shortest possible route, and less costly as well, to secure our nuclear rights in the international community; now we have IR-8 centrifuge machines and they receive injection of UF6," a uranium compound used during the enrichment process.

The IR-8 is an advanced centrifuge that Albright described as 'a creative lemon,' likely to fail.

Ali Akbar Salehi, head of the Iran Nuclear Agency and a member of the negotiating team that brokered the nuclear deal with the U.S. and five other world powers, was also quoted this month:

Iran had begun 'mass production' on another advanced centrifuge model, the IR-6, which has a higher upside.

...while...

"The IR-6 is more promising and one where Iran has pushed the envelope in the restrictions," Albright said.

Rouhani has mentioned in his memoirs, as Iran top nuclear negotiator under President Mohammad Khatami in 2003, that he was able to "trick" the European trio (U.K., France, and Germany) in the negotiations and get away with it.  

As Secertary Tillerson noted similarities between the regime in Tehran and North Korea and the need to end the "strategic patience" policy with the latter country, his conclusion no doubt applies to the Iranian regime, too, if not more.  The so-called strategic patience strategy has a life span of two decades, but the conflict with Iran and the carnage it has forced on the region and the world have lasted twice as long.

Tillerson did not leave out the Iranian regime's treatment of its own citizens and its human right abuses.  He said:

Iran continues to have one of the world's worst human rights records and political opponents are regularly jailed or executed, reaching the agonizing low point of executing juveniles or other individuals whose punishment is not proportionate to their crime.

The U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, in her rotating role as president of the U.N. Security Council, echoed Tillerson's comments on Iran's destabilizing role in the region.  She told the Security Council:

If we are speaking honestly about conflict in the Middle East, we need to start with the chief culprit, Iran, and its partner militia, Hezb'allah.

Today, many in the world agree that the regime in Tehran should be contained before it is too late.  However, a only right and durable solution will work.  Many experts have offered their views and suggestions, but surely the one that will work is the one that aims at the heart of the problem.  Top political analysts and Iranian experts know full well that the powerhouse in Iran is none other than Supreme Leader Khamenei's office and his establishment, a financial conglomerate with holdings of over $90 billion, protected by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The entire Iranian nuclear program rests on the IRGC, and so do the weapons factories, including, but not limited to, the controversial missile development program.  It also includes recruiting, training, and dispatching terrorists under different names to other countries in the region.  The IRGC has a double-layered task, in fact: the suppression of dissent at home and the export of terrorism abroad.  To stop the mullahs in their tracks and limit the damage, there is only one viable solution, and that is to expel them from rule altogether.      

Reza Shafiee is a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI).