Don to pull plug on Iran N- deal
Washington, Oct. 13: President Donald Trump will unveil a more aggressive strategy to check Iran’s growing power on Friday, but will stop short of withdrawing from a landmark nuclear deal or declaring the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organisation.
During a speech at 12: 45 pm from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, Mr Trump is expected to declare the 2015 agreement — which curbed Iran’s nuclear program in return for sanctions relief — is no longer in the US national interest.
Officials say he will not kill the international accord outright, instead “decertifying” the agreement and leaving US lawmakers to decide its fate.
Mr Trump had repeatedly pledged to overturn one of his predecessor Barack Obama’s crowning foreign policy achievements, deriding it as “the worst deal” and one agreed to out of “weakness.”
The agreement was signed between Iran and six world powers — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US — at talks coordinated by the European Union.
It stalled Iran’s nuclear programme and marginally thawed relations between Iran and what Tehran dubs the “Great Satan.”
But opponents, and some supporters, say it also prevented efforts to challenge Iranian influence across the Middle East. In his speech, Mr Trump will rail against Iran’s “destabilising influence” in the Middle East, “particularly its support for terrorism and militants,” the White House said.