US Attempt to Revise Nuclear Deal “Delusional”

A former US presidential aide called US President Donald Trump delusional for seeking a revision of the 2015 nuclear pact.

Trump has so far refrained from carrying out one of his controversial promises during his election campaign to “dismantle the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran”.

Indeed, during his nearly eight-month-old presidency, Trump has twice certified to Congress that Iran has upheld its side of the deal and he has left in place the sanctions relief Iran was granted under the accord in return for time-bound curbs on its nuclear program.

The next deadline for considering those waivers is Sept. 14.

“The president is expected to again renew them, lest the United States be blamed for destroying an agreement that the rest of the UN Security Council, the European Union, the International Atomic Energy Agency and just about every other country in the world agree is working,” Philip Gordon wrote in an op-ed in the Washington Post on Monday.

“At the same time, however, Trump and some of his senior officials now are reported to have a new plan in mind—not to blow up the deal but to renegotiate a better one,” he said, adding that those revisions would include extending the duration of limits on Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity, greater constraints on its ballistic missile development and greater access for international inspectors to Iran’s military sites.

“As attractive as such an outcome would be, the notion that it can be achieved in this way is a fantasy,” Gordon said. Gordon noted that European countries would never come on board with the idea of renegotiating the UN-endorsed deal.

“There is virtually no chance the other parties to the [pact] would agree to insist on such changes [even under the threat of US “secondary sanctions”] and virtually no chance Iran would agree to the changes even if new talks somehow took place,” he declared.