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Returning to Washington on Air Force One on Thursday after touring hurricane-ravaged South Florida, Mr. Trump again criticized the Iran agreement, but he talked around the question of whether he would adhere to it. Instead, he promised other action against Iran.

We are not going to stand for what theyre doing to this country, he told reporters. They have violated so many different elements, but theyve also violated the spirit of that deal. And you will see what well be doing in October. It will be very evident.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has said Iran has complied with its commitments under the arrangement, including inspections.

An approach that stops short of leaving the agreement is unlikely to satisfy its conservative critics, who attacked it as President Barack Obamas cave-in to Iran, an American adversary of nearly four decades. Nor does it promise to satisfy those who see the deal as a building block for engagement with Iran.

Even Washingtons closest ally, Britain, has openly split with those in the administration arguing to ditch the accord. At a news conference in London on Thursday with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, Britains foreign minister, Boris Johnson, noted that the North Korea crisis shows the importance of having arrangements such as the J.C.P.O.A., using the acronym for the formal name of the agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

He called it a position you and I have both adopted, underscoring Mr. Tillersons now widely acknowledged disagreement with Mr. Trump over the importance of the deal.

Mr. Johnson added that in Iran, a country of 80 million people, many of them young, potentially liberal, could be won over could be won over to a new way of thinking. He said that Iranians should see the economic benefits of the nuclear deal and that he had emphasized the point to Mr. Tillerson and other American officials.

Mr. Trumps gradual movement on Iran has been seen as a bellwether of a foreign policy shift underway in the White House, especially since the ouster of Stephen K. Bannon, his former strategist. Mr. Bannon had made confrontation with China and Iran a central element of his approach to reasserting American pre-eminence around the world.

Two of the presidents remaining advisers, Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, his national security adviser, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, are known for hawkish views on Iran. But they do not bring to the debate a sense that the United States is engaged in a clash of civilizations against the country or its ideology. Instead, they have pressed for a quiet escalation of economic and military pushback against Tehrans activities, including support for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria and terrorist groups as well as cyberattacks on American and Arab targets.

The Treasury Department did announce new economic sanctions on Thursday against individuals associated with Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the Quds Force, which is considered a channel to terrorist groups, and companies involved in hacking against American financial institutions in 2011 and 2012.

In announcing the new sanctions, a senior administration official, who insisted on anonymity while briefing a large group of reporters, said that over the past few years, the United States had focused too narrowly on nuclear issues and ignored Irans malign activities. But the administration made no mention of the 2016 indictment of seven Iranians for their involvement in that hacking.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump can persuade his supporters to forget about promises to scrap the agreement, and to focus anew on extending it. Even advocates of the deal in the Obama administration admit to its shortcomings, including the failure to get Iran to give up all enrichment of uranium. Irans nuclear facilities remain open but are operating at very low levels.

Irans foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, tweeted on Thursday that the agreement he reached with his counterpart at the time, Secretary of State John Kerry, was not renegotiable. A better deal is pure fantasy, he wrote. About time for U.S. to stop spinning and begin complying, just like Iran.

Mr. Zarif will be in New York next week for the opening of the United Nations General Assembly, as will Mr. Tillerson. The two men have never met, nor talked, and there are no plans to change that.

Mr. Trump plans to make concerted moves against Iran and North Korea, a centerpiece of his speech to the General Assembly on Tuesday, administration officials say. But it is unclear how specific he will get.

As they slowly clear their way toward a policy, they clearly believe it is very important that the U.S. push back on the Iranians, Kenneth M. Pollack, a scholar at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said of Trump administration officials on Thursday.

But they appear to have concluded that rather than unravel the deal, they need to find ways to renegotiate elements of it, he added.

Mr. Tillerson has argued that it is possible to both retain the existing deal and get allies on board for extending the duration of the restrictions on Irans nuclear activities, while negotiating over Irans development and testing of ballistic missiles.

But he is clearly walking a fine line. It is possible, White House officials say, that Mr. Trump will stop short of blowing up the accord but still insist on declaring to Congress next month that Iran is violating its terms. Such a move would not affect the future of the agreement itself, while a reimposition of congressional sanctions would have violated its terms.

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