WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Tuesday scrapped the Iran nuclear deal signed by his predecessor Barack Obama and re-imposed sanctions on Teheran, saying the agreement had not prevented it from its quest for nuclear weapons.
"I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal," Trump said in a televised address from the White House.
Trump said he is ready, willing and able to renegotiate a nuclear deal that would definitively kill Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and end what he called its sponsorship of terror in the middle east.
In a withering takedown of the previous Obama administration and its conclusion of the Iran deal with the help of Washington European allies, Trump said even if Iran complied with the agreement it would still leave Teheran on the verge of nuclear weapons, so poorly was the deal negotiated.
''If I allow this deal to stay, it will set off a nuclear arms race in the middle east. If the deal cannot not be fixed, the US could no longer be a party to it,'' Trump said in a statement he read out on television inside the White House, maintaining ''we cannot prevent a Iran nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotting structure of this agreement.''
Asserting that he was reinstating and instituting the ''highest level of sanction,'' Trump also warned that any nation that helps Iran would also be subjected to sanctions.
''Today’s action sends a critical message. US never makes empty threats…when I make promises I keep them,'' he warned.
European leaders and officials have warned Trump and his team that Tehran could set off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East if it restarts its uranium enrichment program, but the US President remained unmoved as he nixed the deal that took years to negotiate. He ignored pleas from leaders of France, Germany, and Britain while junking the agreement.
No comments:
Post a Comment