Trump says Iran will ‘never have nuclear weapon’ under deal and criticises Israel over Lebanon
Trump’s Obama analogy is like comparing apples and orangespublished at 12:56 BST
Paul Adams
Diplomatic correspondent
As the
world waits for details of the deal he’s reached with Iran, Donald Trump is at
pains to say how much better it is than the work of his predecessor, Barack
Obama.
“This deal
is a wall to a nuclear weapon,” the president told reporters this morning. “His (Obama’s) deal was a road to a nuclear weapon.”
But it’s a
misleading analogy and the president is comparing apples and oranges.
The deal
due to be signed in Geneva on Friday is a short memorandum of understanding – US Vice President JD Vance says it’s a page-and-a-half long – which will
outline a difficult set of negotiations that will follow over the course of 60
days.
The 2015
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was a 159-page detailed agreement, reached
after 20 months of formal negotiations between Iran and the five permanent
members of the UN Security Council, plus the European Union (the “P5+1”).
The JCPOA aimed to constrain Iran’s nuclear programme by placing limits on the number and type of centrifuges it could use and the level of uranium enrichment permitted.
The deal wasn’t perfect and had plenty of critics, but it was working until Donald Trump pulled the US out in 2018.
We will only know if Trump is capable of pulling off something better when negotiations end in two months’ time.
There’s no shortage of scepticism.
Writing in the Israeli daily newspaper Maariv on Monday, journalist Ben Caspit said Israelis were increasingly convinced that the JCPOA would look “perfect in comparison” to whatever emerges from this summer’s negotiations.
