Boris’ not-so-private line to Donald Trump
Boris Johnson appealed again to Donald Trump not to back out of the Iran nuclear deal yesterday in the most direct way he knew how – appearing on Fox and Friends, the US president’s news show of choice.
The Foreign Secretary is on a twoday trip to Washington to meet with senior Trump administration officials in an attempt to persuade the president to re-certify the deal before a May 12 deadline.
Trump said on Twitter last night that he will be announcing his decision on the Iran deal today from the White House.
Johnson began by saying the US president was ‘‘right to see flaws’’ in the current deal, saying ‘‘he’s set a very reasonable challenge to the world’’.
But he warned that without the accord, Iran could develop a nuclear weapon and would spark ‘‘an arms race in the Middle East’’.
‘‘You’re going to have the Saudis wanting one, the Egyptians, the Emiratis, it’s already a very, very dangerous state at the moment, we don’t want to go down that route,’’ he told Brian Kilmeade, the Fox News host. Johnson said a key flaw was the socalled ‘‘sunset clause’’ in the deal, which currently allows Iran to develop enrichment programmes after 2025 without economic sanctions. But he argued that solution was to ‘‘fix the flaws in the deal’’, saying ‘‘there doesn’t seem to me at the moment to be a viable military solution’’.
Johnson later told Sky News that Trump would be ‘‘in line for the Nobel Peace Prize if he can fix the Iran nuclear deal’’.
The deal, which Trump has called the ‘‘worst ever made’’, was signed in 2015 by the US, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia.
Under the pact, international sanctions were eased in return for verifiable limits on Tehran’s nuclear programme.
The president got into a public spat yesterday with John Kerry, the former secretary of state and lead negotiator of the deal for the Obama administration, who has been quietly promoting the nuclear agreement. Trump said on Twitter: ‘‘The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!’’
France and Germany remain committed to the accord, but in order to address US concerns are willing to open talks on Iran’s ballistic missile programme, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 – when key provisions of the deal start to expire – and its role in Middle East crises such as Syria and Yemen.
Hassan Rowhani, Iran’s president, said yesterday that his country would stay in the deal even if the US pulls out, provided that the other parties remain involved. ‘‘We are not worried about America’s cruel decisions . . . We are prepared for all scenarios and no change will occur in our lives next week,’’ said Rowhani, who engineered the accord to ease Iran’s isolation.
Iran has said documents presented last week by Israel accusing the Islamic republic of entering the deal under false pretences were a rehash of old allegations already dealt with by the UN’S nuclear watchdog. ‘‘If they want to make sure that we are not after a nuclear bomb, we have said repeatedly that we are not and we will not be,’’ he said. – Telegraph Group