France tells Trump that quitting Iran nuclear deal risks 'spiral of proliferation'
The French government will use meetings at the UN this week to try to persuade Donald Trump not to abandon the nuclear agreement with Iran, warning that the deal’s collapse would trigger a “spiral of proliferation” in the Middle East, the French foreign minister said.
Jean-Yves Le Drian said that Iran was abiding by the terms of the 2015 deal, and that verification measures were being “strictly implemented” by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Donald Trump, however, has claimed that Tehran has violated the deal, at least “in spirit” and has threatened he would not certify Iranian compliance when the state department is required to report on its implementation on 15 October.
Le Drian argued the deal was vital to global security.
“It’s essential to maintain it to prevent a spiral of proliferation that would encourage hardliners in Iran to pursue nuclear weapons,” the minister told journalists in New York on the sidelines of this week’s UN general assembly.
Trump is due to make his maiden UN speech at the opening of the general assembly on Tuesday, but he took part in his first UN meeting and made his first remarks on Monday at a side meeting about reform of the organisation. He praised the secretary general, António Guterres, describing him as “fantastic”.
“I applaud the secretary general for laying out a vision for reforming the United Nations so it better serves the people we all represent,” Trump said. He extolled the noble goals of the organisation, but warned that in recent years the United Nations had not reached its full potential because of bureaucracy and mismanagement.
“We are not seeing results in line with the investment but I know that under the secretary general, that’s changing and it’s changing fast,” the president said.
In his remarks, Trump – a former property developer and TV reality show host – could not resist a plug for his golden Trump Tower across the road from the UN headquarters. Because of the location, he said, it had “turned out to be such a successful project”.
At a lunchtime meeting in a New York hotel, Trump met the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who is lobbying strenuously for the nuclear agreement to be radically revised or abandoned.
“I look forward to discussing with you how we can address together what you rightly call is the terrible nuclear deal with Iran and how to roll back Iran’s growing aggression in the region, especially in Syria,” Netanyahu said at the start of the meeting.
Two hours later, the US president met his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, who was expected to make the opposite argument.
“France will try to persuade President Trump of the importance of this choice,” Le Drian said. He was non-committal when asked if the deal could survive if the US abrogated it by imposing new sanctions, while the other national signatories – France, the UK, Germany, China, Russia and Iran – continued to uphold it.
“It would be a great responsibility,” he said, restating the heavy cost of collapse.
The US secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, is due to meet his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, for the first time on Wednesday evening at a session of a joint commission established by the signatories of the 2015 nuclear agreement. The meeting will be hosted by the EU foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini.
In his remarks, Le Drian argued that the crisis over North Korean nuclear and missile tests, showed the importance of upholding the Iran agreement.
“In this period when we see the risks with North Korea, we must maintain this line,” he said. Under the terms of the agreement, Iran accepted strict limits on its nuclear activities and its stockpiles of related materials such as enriched uranium and heavy water, in return for sanctions relief.
In an interview on Sunday, the US national security adviser, HR McMaster, repeated Trump’s assertion that the agreement was “the worst deal ever” and that the US would not strike a similar bargain with North Korea, stripping Pyongyang of all its nuclear weapons and virtually all of its nuclear materials, even if the regime agreed.
“I don’t think so,” McMaster told ABC News. “I think we recognise that there are some significant pitfalls in this deal. What the problem is in North Korea has been for years is, as you know, we’ve negotiated with North Korea before. North Korea has then entered into these weak agreements and then immediately breaks those agreements.”
He claimed that Iran was breaking its agreement by “spinning too many centrifuges, having too much heavy water”.
However, the IAEA did not report any such infractions in its latest assessment of Iran’s activity earlier this month. Iran’s stock of heavy water had risen above the permitted ceilings twice last year, but has since been reduced to well under the agreed caps.
Heavy water can be used in a moderating agent in a certain type of reactor, that generates plutonium as a byproduct. Iran had been building such a reactor before the 2015 agreement, but as part of that deal it was stopped and the core chamber was filled with concrete.