Donald Trump has said he will announce his decision on whether to pull the US out of the international Iran nuclear deal this evening - after Boris Johnson made a last-ditch plea to the US president to stay the course.
Rather than meeting Trump face-to-face, the foreign secretary appeared on Trump’s favourite morning news show, Fox & Friends, which has been said to set his agenda for the day. Johnson admitted that the 2015 deal was not perfect, but urged Trump not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” by walking away from it.
Trump has been a vocal critic of the multilateral deal negotiated by his predecessor, Barack Obama, which halted Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for a lifting of economic sanctions. Despite campaigning on a pledge to tear up the deal, he has until now kept the US in.
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That has been in large part because of the influence of senior members of his administration - but in a recent round of appointments many of the strongest voices advocating keeping the deal have been replaced by more hawkish advisers. New Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton seem to have convinced Trump to follow his instincts and pull the US out.
However, Trump “is expected to stop short of reneging on the deal altogether”, says The Washington Post. “Instead, he will address a portion of the wide range of sanctions that were waived when the deal was first implemented, while leaving in limbo other waivers that are due in July.”
Last week Pompeo said the deal had been “built on lies” after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivered a dramatic presentation in which he accused Iran of having run a secret nuclear weapons programme for years.
Under US law, the president has to re-certify the agreement every three months, meaning Trump has to make a decision by 12 May. Last night he said he would bring forward the decision to this evening.
The deadline has led to a frantic behind-the-scenes effort led by France, Germany and Britain. French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor have met Trump in Washington over the past two weeks. In what appears to be a last throw of Britain’s diplomatic dice, Johnson travelled to the US for a round of media appearances aimed directly at the President.
Expanding on ideas he set out in an article for The New York Times, Johnson told Fox & Friends that, without a deal in place, Iran could develop a nuclear weapon and start an arms race among countries in the region.
He said that while the deal had weaknesses, “of all the options we have for ensuring that Iran never gets a nuclear weapon, this pact offers the fewest disadvantages”.
Iran has also been engaged in its own publicity campaign in a bid to save the deal. In a speech broadcast on state TV over the weekend, President Hassan Rouhani said abandoning the agreement would be a “historic mistake”.
But Rouhani also said Iran had plans for “whatever decision is made by Trump [and] when it comes to weapons and defending our country, we will not negotiate with anybody”.
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