Dismayed European allies sought to salvage the international nuclear pact and preserve their business with Iran on Wednesday after President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the landmark accord.
The deal is not dead. There’s an American withdrawal from the deal but the deal is still there,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said.
Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said: “Mr Trump, I tell you on behalf of the Iranian people: You’ve made a mistake … I said many times from the first day: don’t trust America.” A government spokesman said Iran had drawn up a response proportional to Washington’s withdrawal.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who like other European leaders had lobbied Trump to keep the agreement, urged his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani in a phone call to keep respecting the deal, and consider broader negotiations.
Trump announced on Tuesday he would reimpose U.S. economic sanctions on Iran to undermine what he called “a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”.
The fruit of more than a decade of diplomacy, the agreement was concluded in 2015 by the United States, France, Britain, Germany, Russia, China and Iran.
It was designed to prevent Iran obtaining a nuclear bomb in return for the removal of sanctions that had crippled its economy, not least by Washington threatening to penalize businesses anywhere in the world that traded with Iran.
Trump complained that the deal, the signature foreign policy achievement of his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama, did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program, its nuclear activities beyond 2025 or its role in conflicts in Yemen and Syria.
His decision raises the risk of deepening conflicts in the Middle East, puts the United States at odds with European diplomatic and business interests, and casts uncertainty over global oil supplies. Oil prices rose more than 2 percent, with Brent hitting a 3-1/2-year high. [O/R]
The deal could also strengthen the hand of hardliners in Iran’s political scene, at the expense of moderates like Rouhani who had pinned their hopes on the deal to boost living standards in Iran, with limited success so far.
Source – Reuters