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Trump Unlikely to Undo Nuclear Agreement

Barack Obama
Barack Obama

US President Barack Obama said on Monday he expects that his successor will likely reconsider campaign vows to undo some of Obama’s signature international accomplishments, including the Iran nuclear deal, when he takes office in January.

He made the remark at a White House news conference in response to a question about president-elect Donald Trump’s campaign vows to gut, rework or void international agreements on climate change and Iran’s nuclear program, CNN reported.

“It becomes more difficult to undo something that’s working than undo something that isn’t working,” Obama said, citing the success of the Iran pact and the accomplishment of getting almost 200 nations to ratify the Paris Agreement on climate change.

The president also cited tradition. “These international agreements, the tradition has been, you carry them forward across administrations … particularly if you find they’re good for us.”

Obama was asked about Trump’s vow to undo the Iran nuclear agreement finalized in July 2015 after negotiations between Iran, the US, Germany, the UK, France, Russia and China.

Trump repeatedly bashed the Iran deal during the campaign, disparaging it as “terrible” and declaring in March at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee that his “No. 1 priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran”.

Obama said Trump would find it hard to do so, particularly because Iran has complied with the deal over its first year.

“Trump will also have to consider the impact on America’s closest allies,” Obama added.

“For us to pull out would require us to start sanctioning those other countries that were still abiding by the deal because from their perspective they were still abiding” by the deal, Obama said.

Mark Dubowitz, executive director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and a critic of the agreement, said Trump is “likely to enforce the Iran deal but to treat any violation of the deal — no matter how small— as grounds to re-impose sanctions”.

 

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