Trump says Iran has not ‘lived up to the spirit’ of the nuclear agreement

President Trump on Thursday criticized the nuclear deal with Iran just day after his secretary of state certified that Iran was complying with the terms of the agreement, calling it “terrible” and “as bad as I've ever seen negotiated.”

“As far as Iran is concerned, I think they are doing a tremendous disservice to an agreement that was signed,” Trump said. “It was a terrible agreement, it shouldn’t have been signed, it shouldn’t have been negotiated the way it was negotiated. I’m all for agreements, but that was a bad one, as bad as I’ve ever seen negotiated.”

The president's comments came in a nearly 20-minute news conference Thursday afternoon with Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni, with Trump weighing in on several global trouble spots, including Iran, North Korea and Libya.

“Iran has not lived up to the spirit of the agreement, and they have to do that, they have to do that,” the president said.

Asked whether Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, was mentally unstable, Trump demurred.

“I can't answer your question on stability,” he said. “I hope the answer is a positive one, not a negative one. But, hopefully, that will be something that gets taken care of.”

The president also repeated his calls for China to play a larger role in helping pressure North Korea, a dictatorship whose nuclear weapons program has caused deep consternation around the world and created special tension with the United States.

Trump said he and Chinese President Xi Jinping have a strong relationship of mutual respect — while noting that he told Xi that he plans to use trade negotiations as a bargaining chip to force China to engage more on pushing North Korea to limit its nuclear ambitions.

“I actually...