Saudi Prince: Trump Shouldn’t Scrap Iran Deal

US President-elect Donald Trump should not scrap a nuclear deal between Iran and world powers but should take the nation to task for its allegedly “destabilizing activities” in the Middle East, said a former senior Saudi official. Trump, who triumphed in the US election this week, has said he would dismantle the nuclear deal agreed last year, although he has made other contradictory statements on the accord. “I don’t think he should scrap it. It’s been worked on for many years and the general consensus in the world, not just the United States, is that it has achieved an objective, which is a 15-year hiatus in the program that Iran embarked on to [allegedly] develop nuclear weapons,” Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi intelligence chief, said on Thursday, Reuters reported. Iran denies allegations that it sought to develop nuclear arms, stressing that its nuclear program is only meant for peaceful applications. This has been confirmed by numerous inspections conducted by the International Atomic Energy Agency. “To scrap that willy-nilly as it were will have ramifications and I don’t know if something else can be put in its place to guarantee that Iran will not go that route if the agreement is scrapped,” Faisal said at a think-tank event in Washington.