Iran says will stay in N-deal even if US exits

TEHRAN: Iran´s President Hassan Rouhani said Monday that his country would stay in the nuclear deal even if the United States pulls out, on the condition that the other parties remain.

“Either what we want from the nuclear deal is guaranteed by the non-American parties, or it is not the case and we will follow our own path,” Rouhani said on the presidency website, without elaborating.

Rouhani said Iran had “thought of all the scenarios and have taken appropriate measures.“The United States will be the principle loser in this affair,” said Rouhani.Trump has demanded the Europeans find a way to “fix” the existing deal by putting new curbs on Iran´s missile programme and regional interventions, or he will reimpose nuclear-related sanctions at the next deadline for review on May 12.

European powers make last-ditch appeal to save Iran nuclear deal: Britain, France and Germany made a last-ditch appeal Monday to US President Donald Trump not to abandon the Iran nuclear deal as a key deadline approaches, warning that scrapping it would spark an “escalation”.

German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas warned that the accord´s collapse could spark “an escalation” in the region and stressed that Washington´s key European allies remain convinced saving it “makes the world a safer place”.

His French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian, on a Berlin visit, said that the agreement is “the right way to stop Iran from getting access to nuclear weapons” and “will save us from nuclear proliferation”.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, who travelled to Washington, cautioned that “at this delicate juncture, it would be a mistake to walk away from the nuclear agreement and remove the restraints that it places on Iran”.

“Now that these handcuffs are in place, I see no possible advantage in casting them aside,” Johnson wrote in The New York Times.He argued that “every available alternative is worse”, adding that “the wisest course would be to improve the handcuffs rather than break them”.