Article snippet: The White House is blaming a mistake that had brief but worldwide impact on a “clerical error” – after press secretary Sarah Sanders released a statement Monday evening stating that nuclear weapons program.” By using the word "has," the statement implied that Iran continued to work on its secret nuclear weapons program – which would have constituted a violation of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran nuclear agreement. The error reverberated across the globe, catching the attention of two prominent Middle Eastern publications, Haaretz and the Jerusalem Post, causing confusion over whether the United States currently assesses Iran’s nuclear weapons program to be active. Less than two hours after releasing the statement, the White House updated the critical word on its website to the past tense, clarifying that the U.S. view is that Iran “had a robust, clandestine nuclear weapons program.” As the administration mulls leaving the JCPOA, the backlash online surrounding the original statement’s error prompted the National Security Council to attempt to explain the mistake. “The original White House statement included a clerical error, which we quickly detected and fixed,” a national security official explained. “Our statement referred to the information from the Israeli presentation, which describes an Iranian effort from 1999-2003 to develop nuclear weapons, called ‘Project Amad.’ “To be clear, the United States has long kno... Link to the full article to read more