Trump administration accuses Iran of seeking nuclear arms
● Bolton makes fresh claims over alleged sabotage of oil tankers in Gulf
Donald Trump’ s national security adviser has said there is “no reason” for Iran to back out of its nuclear deal with world powers other than to seek atomic weapons.
John Bolton’ s comments come a year after the US president unilaterally withdrew America from the accord.
Mr Bolton, long a hawk on Iran, also claimed – without offering evidence – that the alleged sabotage off our oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates came from naval mines placed “almost certainly by Iran”.
Speaking in Abu Dhabi, the Emirati capital, he told journalists there had been a previously unknown attempt to attack the Saudi oil port of Yanbu as well.
However, Mr Bolton stressed that the US has not seen any further Iranian attacks in the time since, something he attributed to military deployments – America recently sent an aircraft carrier and B-52 bombers to the Persian Gulf.
He warned the US would strike back if attacked.
“The point is to make it very clear to Iran and its surrogates that these kinds of action risk a very strong response from the United States,” Mr Bolton said, without elaborating.
Saudi officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Mr Bolton’ s claim on Yanbu, which is the terminus, or end point, of the kingdom’s East-west Pipeline.
That pipeline was attacked in recent days in a co-ordinated dr one assault launched by Yemen’ s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels.
Iran’s foreign ministry rejected the accusations that Tehran was behind the alleged sabotage of oil tankers off the coast of the United Arab Emirates.
In Tehran, foreign ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said it was a “ridiculous accusation” but not a surprise and “not a strange thing” since it came from someone with a long record of an anti-Iran stance.
In recent weeks, tensions have soared as the US beefed up its military presence in the Persian Gulf in response to a still-unexplained threat from Iran.
The US has also accused Iran of being behind a string of incidents, including the alleged sabotage of oil tankers near th eU AE coast and a rocket that landed near the US embassy in Baghdad, while Yemen’s Iranian-aligned Houthi rebels have launched a string of dr one attacks targeting Saudi Arabia. Iran, meanwhile, has announced it is backing away from the 2015 nuclear deal, which saw it limit its enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
Mr Trump withdrew the US from the accord as he believes it did not go far enough in limiting the Iranian nuclear programme, nor did it address Iran’ s ballistic missile programme.
Mr Bolton said that without more nuclear power plants, it made no sense for Iran to stockpile more low-enriched uranium as it now plans to do.
But the US also earlier cut off Iran’s ability to sell its uranium to Russia in exchange for unprocessed yellow-cake uranium.
Iran has set a 7 July deadline for Europe to offer better terms to the unravelling nuclear deal, otherwise it will resume enrichment closer to weapons level.