Daily Times

Our Washington Correspondent

US President Donald Trump has indicated that he may agree to a ‘new deal’ negotiated by American and European allies that would preserve the Iran deal if it was strong enough.

Hosting French President Emanuel Macron, Trump, in response to a question about Europe’s position on the nuclear agreement, said, “We’re fairly close to understanding each other. Our one-on-one went very well.”

Macron said, “On Iran, we will look at it in a wider regional context … for example there’s Syria and the situation in the whole region. We have a common objective, we want to make sure there’s no escalation and no nuclear proliferation in the region. We now need to find the right path forward.”

Macron arrived at the White House on Monday for the first state visit during Trump’s presidency, intended to use his relationship with Trump to persuade him to preserve the Iran deal and to reinforce the Europe’s message ahead of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s visit on Friday.

The visits come ahead of the May 12 deadline when trump will decide whether to ‘fix’ the Iran deal or abandon it. He loathes the deal. “The worst I’ve ever seen” he told Fox News in a 2017 interview. He termed it a ‘disaster’ but stopped short of rescinding the agreement, which in his opinion “should never have been negotiated.” France, Germany, Britain, Russia and China were parties to the accord.

On Tuesday, the two presidents met along with their advisers at the White House Cabinet Room and later briefed the media that their talks focused on the Iran nuclear deal.

Macron outlined some of the key issues under discussion, including proposals to increase sanctions over Iran’s ballistic missile programme and extend limitations on its nuclear programme beyond 2030.

The 2015 agreement sealed under Obama required Iran to curb its nuclear program to avoid crippling sanctions. Critics of the deal as well as Trump have assailed it because they claim it fails to block Iran’s missile development, prevent it from destabilizing the region and expires after a decade.

France played a key role in the negotiations, since it wants the three-year-old nuclear agreement with Iran extended next month. The Europeans want an assurance that the US will abide by the agreement.

The recent appointments of John Bolton as national security adviser and Mike Pompano as secretary of state – both staunch anti-Iran hawks – supported Trump’s confrontational approach to impose sanctions on Tehran over its nuclear program – a move that could initiate the demise of the nuclear agreement.

In April, on the first day of Bolton’s appointment, Iranian President Hassan Rohan, had warned Trump that “Iran will not violate the nuclear deal, but if the United States withdraws from the deal, they will surely regret it.”

Published in Daily Times, April 26^th 2018.