Critics quick to make Iran comparison
President Donald Trump’s triumphant assertions about the success of the unprecedented Singapore summit are being met with scepticism and outright derision from critics seizing on the contradiction between his withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and his willingness to accept vague pledges from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
White House officials say the Singapore summit set out broad goals to be met in the coming months while the Iran deal, signed by President Barack Obama in 2015 and approved by seven nations, was an imperfect end to 18 months of negotiations.
Criticism that Tuesday’s commitment does not include specifics on denuclearisation and verification is too early, they argue.
“While I am glad the President and Kim Jong Un were able to meet, it is difficult to determine what of concrete nature has occurred,” said Republican Senator Bob Corker, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
The top Democrat on that panel, Senator Bob Menendez, who also opposed the Iran deal, took issue with Trump’s zeal as well as his announcement of the suspension of US-South Korea military exercises.
“In exchange for selfies in Singapore, we have undermined our maximum pressure policy and sanctions,” Menendez said.
Victor Cha, a Georgetown University professor and former National Security Council director for Asia in President George W. Bush’s Administration, lamented that the summit results “left a lot to be desired”.
But he also maintained that the Trump-Kim meeting had reduced the chance of conflict even if it was only a “modest start”.
“Despite its many flaws, the Singapore summit represents the start of a diplomatic process that takes us away from the brink of war,” Cha wrote in the New York Times in the immediate aftermath of the summit.
Cha and Koreas expert Sue Mi Terry said in a paper for the Centre for Strategic and International Studies: “Trump has assailed Obama’s deal with Iran as the ‘worst ever’, but he now faces substantial challenges to achieve as much as Obama did.”
Iran itself cautioned North Korea against taking Trump at his word.
“We are facing a man who revokes his signature while abroad,” the semiofficial Fars news agency quoted government spokesman Mohammad Bagher Nobakht as saying on Tuesday.