Dumping Iran nuke deal slated

ABOUT-TURN: TRUMP DECIDES NOT TO CERTIFY 2015 ACCORD, SPARKING GRAVE EU CONCERN

US president’s unpredictability threatens global stability, says former president of France.

Seoul

Former French president Francois Hollande yesterday slammed Donald Trump’s hardline stance on the Iran nuclear deal, which Paris helped to negotiate, as a “double fault”, warning the US president’s “unpredictability” threatened global stability.

Trump’s threat to ditch the landmark 2015 agreement, which saw Tehran dramatically scale back its nuclear ambitions in return for an end to punishing sanctions, has sparked a chorus of foreign support for the pact.

“Trump’s decision not to certify the accord and to demand that Congress strengthen sanctions is, in my eyes, a double fault,” Hollande said in Seoul. The former leader’s first speech on international affairs since leaving the Elysee in May laid into the “confusion” appearing to emanate from the White House. Trump has said the agreement was letting Iran off the hook but left it up to the US Congress to decide whether to reimpose sanctions.

The former French leader said the US president’s actions showed a “deep misunderstanding of the negotiation’s purpose”, which was to “stop Iran from obtaining weapons, and not to make it change its politics”. He also accused Trump of “damaging the credibility of any future negotiations with North Korea” with Washington’s aboutturns, a concern shared by European Union ministers. “It has to be shown agreements will be kept to in the long term,” he said.

The European Union said on Monday it would send its chief diplomat Federica Mogherini to Washington next month to fight for the nuclear deal.

Hollande said the world “has not been this polarised, in different ways, since 1945” ... In the face of nuclear proliferation, the world needed “certainty and stability”, he added. “The worst option is unpredictability, which can lead to irrationality.” –