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Trump Says He’s Decided on Iran Deal as Allies Oppose Changes
By Nick Wadhams September 20, 2017, 9:31 AM CDT
President
Donald Trump said “I have decided” whether the U.S. will continue to abide by the Iran nuclear deal, declining to elaborate as his top diplomat prepares to lobby other countries to demand changes in the multinational accord.
Trump’s comment to reporters in New York Wednesday came hours before Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was to meet with his counterparts from Iran and the six world powers that signed the agreement in 2015 after months of agonizing negotiations. He’ll be
joined by the U.S. envoy to the UN, Nikki Haley.
Trump, who called the deal “an embarrassment to the United States” in his combative speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, and his advisers contend that the accord simply postpones the day when Iran will be able to develop a nuclear weapon because many of its toughest restrictions expire in 2025 or 2030. But other world leaders made it clear they have little appetite to reopen the accord or add new restrictions on top of it.
“The JCPOA is the best current option,” Australia Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said in an interview, referring to the accord formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. “It’s not perfect but it’s the best current option.”
Read More: A QuickTake Q&A on whether the U.S. will torpedo the Iran deal
Trump must decide by Oct. 15 whether to certify to the U.S. Congress that Iran is complying with the agreement, as he’s required to do every 90 days, and he’s been increasingly open in suggesting he’ll say it isn’t. In recent weeks, U.S. diplomats have approached European officials to see if they would join in demanding an extension to the limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment that will expire in coming years.
‘Sunset Clauses’
Tillerson has said those “sunset clauses” were the deal’s biggest flaw.
“The president really wants to re-do that deal, he said renegotiate it,” Tillerson said in an interview with Fox News on Sept. 19. “We do need the support I think of our allies, the European allies and others, to make the case as well to Iran that this deal really has to be revisited.”
He described the accord as “just simply kicking the can down the road again, for someone in the future to have to deal with.”
Most countries backing the agreement cite findings by the International Atomic Energy Agency that Iran is meeting the letter of its responsibilities under the accord. The 2015 deal provided an easing of international economic sanctions in return for curbs on the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program.
U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman James Slack told reporters in New York that she met Wednesday morning with Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani “and she reiterated the importance of the deal.”
The most direct rebuttal to Trump came from French President Emmanuel Macron, who said in his UN speech Tuesday that the Iran agreement is “robust” and “to put it into question without anything to replace it is a grave error.”
That was an ominous sign for Tillerson’s efforts because proponents of toughening the deal had pointed to France as the country least satisfied with the accord when it was reached and most likely to get on board for changes. But the French government has changed since then.
“If we denounce the accord, do we better manage nuclear proliferation?” Macron said in his speech to the General Assembly. “I don’t think so.”
Iran’s Response
Any changes would require the support -- or at least acquiescence -- of Iran, which has been unequivocal in saying it wouldn’t back any reopening the deal, as well as Russia and China. Speaking to reporters Wednesday after meeting with Tillerson, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called Trump’s stance on the nuclear deal “very worrying” and said his country would defend the deal.
Commenting on Twitter, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said Trump’s speech belongs in medieval times, “not the 21st century UN.”
“Fake empathy for Iranians fools no one,” he said.
Trump, who had previously described the Iran agreement as “the worst deal ever,” called in his UN speech for other countries to join the U.S. in stopping Iran’s pursuit of “death and destruction.”
The only country to publicly back the U.S. stance was Israel, whose prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, applauded vigorously when Trump’s speech concluded and called it “courageous.”
“The greater danger is not that Iran will rush to a single bomb by breaking the deal, but that Iran will be able to build many bombs by keeping the deal,” Netanyahu said at the UN. “Israel will defend itself with the full force of our arms and the full power of our convictions.”
