The White House has delayed imposing new financial sanctions on Iran over its ballistic-missile program, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday. The shift in thinking appears to come after the Iranian President, Hassan Rouhani, ordered his defense minister to accelerate the country’s ballistic missile program and threatened to intensify its missile capacity as a reprisal to the impending sanctions. In response to new US #sanctions planned against Iran’s ballistic missile program, have ordered the Defense Minister to expedite the program — Hassan Rouhani (@HassanRouhani) December 31, 2015 The WSJ reports: U.S. officials offered no definitive timeline for when the sanctions would be imposed after the decision was made Wednesday to delay them. At one point, they were scheduled to be announced Wednesday morning in Washington, according to a notification the White House sent to Congress. Republican leaders on Thursday accused the Obama administration of losing its will to challenge Iran after Tehran countered on Thursday that it would accelerate the development of its arsenal. “If the president’s announced sanctions ultimately aren’t executed, it would demonstrate a level of fecklessness that even the president hasn’t shown before,” said Rep. Mike Pompeo (R., Kan.), a leading critic [...]