Leaders out to save deal

DISMAYED European allies have sought to salvage the Iran nuclear deal and preserve their Iranian trade after President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the landmark accord and ordered sanctions reimposed on Tehran.

“The deal is not dead. There’s an American withdrawal from the deal but the deal is still there,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian (pictured), said.

But Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who helped engineer the 2015 deal to ease Iran’s economically crippling isolation, told French counterpart Emmanuel Macron in a phone call that Europe had only a “limited opportunity” to preserve the pact.

Mr Trump on Tuesday said he would revive US economic sanctions, which would penalise foreign firms doing business with Tehran, to undermine what he called “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”.

The fruit of more than a decade of diplomacy, the nuclear agreement was clinched in July 2015 by the US, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and Iran. It was designed to prevent Iran developing a nuclear bomb in return for the removal of sanctions that had crippled its economy.