Trump, Macron call for new nuclear deal with Iran

WASHINGTON: French President Emmanuel Macron and his American counterpart Donald Trump called jointly Tuesday for a new nuclear deal with Iran, after the US leader denounced the three-year-old accord as “insane.”

“I can say that we have had very frank discussions on that, just the two of us,” Macron told a joint press conference with Trump at his side.“We, therefore, wish from now on to work on a new deal with Iran.”

“I think we will have a great shot at doing a much bigger, maybe, deal,” said Trump, stressing that any new deal would have to be built on “solid foundations.”“This is a deal with decayed foundations. It’s a bad deal, it’s a bad structure. It’s falling down,” the US leader said. “We’re going to see what happens on the 12th.”

When asked to clarify if he meant he was pushing for a new accord, or an add-on agreement, Macron said: “I’m not saying that we move from one agreement to another.”The French president said a new deal would have to include three additional elements: Tehran’s ballistic missile program, its influence across the Middle East, and what happens after 2025 — when under the current accord Iran would be able to progressively restart part of its nuclear program. He called the initial 2015 deal only the “first pillar” of an eventual wider deal.

“They’re not going to be restarting anything. If they restart it, they’re going to have big problems, bigger than they ever had before. And you can mark it down,” the US president said.Russia, China call on UN nuclear forum to save Iran deal: Russia on Tuesday urged a United Nations nuclear disarmament forum to show its support for the “fragile” Iran nuclear accord by signing onto a statement, co-written by China, backing the deal.

The head of the arms control unit at Russia’s foreign ministry, Vladimir Yermakov, called on UN members to not “keep silence in hope that the situation will somehow blow over.”Addressing the preliminary review meeting of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Yermakov described the landmark 2015 Iran nuclear agreement as “quite a fragile compromise.”

“We believe there is a demand for such a collective message by the (meeting) and hope that the document will find broad support,” he said. The Russian official then took a thinly veiled shot at Trump’s call to renegotiate the JCPOA in hopes of securing tougher terms.

“Any attempts to amend (the) text for someone’s benefit will inevitably... have powerful negative consequences for regional global stability and security,” Yermakov said.Iran says Europe must not pay Trump ‘ransom’ over nuclear deal: A top Iranian official on Tuesday welcomed European powers’ efforts to salvage a historic nuclear deal, but warned they should not simply hand over “a ransom” to US President Donald Trump.

“We have welcomed the insistence of the European Union on keeping America in the JCPOA (nuclear deal),” said Ali Shamkhani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme Council for National Security, in a televised press conference. “But if this means degrading the Islamic republic of Iran or paying a ransom to Trump, the Europeans are making a strategic mistake,” he said.