Trump ‘to quit nuclear deal with Iran today’
DONALD Trump is today expected to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal.
The US President tweeted last night that he would make an announcement on the future of the agreement from the White House this afternoon.
Senior UK diplomatic sources said they were ‘deeply pessimistic’ about the outcome.
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson – who was in Washington yesterday in a last-ditch bid to prevent a US pullout – said Mr Trump would be in line for the Nobel Peace Prize if he can sort out the Iran nuclear deal.
‘If he can fix North Korea and if he can fix the Iran nuclear deal, then I don’t see why he is any less of a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama, who got it before he even did anything,’ Mr Johnson told Sky News.
Mr Trump has condemned the Iran accord signed by his predecessor Mr Obama as ‘insane’ and the ‘worst deal ever’. Scrapping it was a commitment he made during his election campaign.
The decision is likely despite desperate lobbying from a string of European leaders, including French president Emmanuel Macron.
Prime Minister Theresa May spoke to Mr Trump on the phone over the weekend, and Mr Johnson yesterday urged the President not to ‘throw the baby out with the bathwater’ by walking away.
He accepted the agreement was not perfect but warned that there was not a better alternative.
Mr Johnson has held talks with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior administration figures.
In the 2015 deal, Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities in return for eased economic sanctions. Tehran claimed at the time it had been pursuing only nuclear energy rather than weapons.
Mr Johnson said the President ‘is right to see the flaws’ in the accord, but he argued they could be fixed.
In an interview with Fox News, he added: ‘The President has a legitimate point. He set a challenge for the world. We think you can be tougher on Iran, address the concerns of the President and not throw the baby out with the bathwater, not junk a deal.
‘Plan B does not seem to be to me particularly well developed at this stage.’
If the deal fails, Iran could spark a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, he warned.
Mr Pompeo says the accord was ‘built on lies’ after Israel revealed secret files accusing Iran of having run a secret nuclear weapons programme.
In a separate interview with Sky News, Mr Johnson accepted the situation was ‘very risky’.
He said: ‘On balance, there have got to be considerable risks at the moment that the US will walk away. There could well be a collapse of the deal. And what happens then? The Iranians just go for a bomb? How do we stop them?
‘What’s our plan B? I think that’s the question the world needs to focus on.’ Yesterday Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country could keep its nuclear deal even if the US pulls out.
This was providing the EU guarantees Tehran would keep benefiting from the accord, he added. Speaking during a meeting with officials in the north- eastern city of Mashhad, the Iranian leader said a US pullout would be a ‘strategic mistake’.
He said: ‘What we want for the deal is that it’s preserved and guaranteed by the non-Americans’, a reference to other signatories. He added that in this case ‘then the US pullout will be OK’.
France and Germany later said they will also keep to the agreement, regardless of Mr Trump’s decision.
German foreign minister Heiko Maas said Berlin wanted to stick by the accord because it ‘makes the world a safer place and without it the world would be less safe’.
‘A challenge for the world’