Tabnak – As the world leaders have gathered together in New York to take part at the United Nations General Assembly, debates over the fate of Iran’s nuclear deal, sparked by the US President Donald Trump’s positions on the issue, has become a very important case to watch. The issue was also at top of the agenda when Trump met Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu on Monday.
After his meeting with Trump in New York on Monday, Netanyahu claimed that Trump had assured him he would "fix” the Iran deal. Netanyahu said he presented the US with a detailed plan on how to do that. However, the Israeli Prime Minister stopped short of presenting more details of his plan or the meeting.
Anti War analytical website notes that Netanyahu has been pushing Trump to scrap the nuclear deal, though he’s running up against objections from Israeli military and intelligence leaders. They note that Iran is complying with the deal as written, and apart from Trump, no one in the P5+1 seems particularly keen to challenge the deal.
The concern among Israeli officials is that Trump might ultimately withdraw from the deal when he doesn’t get his way on "fixing” it, but the rest of the world will leave the deal intact, both costing the US influence over how the deal is policed, and giving the appearance that the US and by extension Israel, are trying to undermine a functioning agreement.
For his part, Trump who is well-known for expressing vague positions on very important issues, said before his Monday meeting with Netanyahu that "very soon” he will reveal his plans regarding Iranian nuclear deal.
Before the start of his meeting with Netanyahu at a New York hotel upon being asked about whether he is thinking of abandoning the nuclear pact with Iran, Trump responded: "You’ll be seeing very soon.”
Earlier on Monday, Trump had said that Washington will withdraw from the Iran deal if UN atomic energy agency shows any "weakness” in monitoring it. Trump told the IAEA’s annual meeting in Vienna that if the International Atomic Energy Agency fails to obtain access to Iranian military sites thought to be engaged in illegal nuclear activity, "We will not accept a weakly enforced or inadequately monitored deal.”
However, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who is also in New York to attend the General Assembly, says Washington will pay a high price if Trump carries out his threats to scrap the nuclear deal. "Leaving such an agreement would carry a high cost for the United States of America,” Rouhani said in an exclusive interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour in New York on Monday.
On the other hand, The IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano on Monday once again confirmed that Iran was implementing its commitments under the nuclear deal (JCPOA). Amano made the remarks in his opening address to the IAEA's 61st General Conference in Vienna, a week after he told the 35-member Board of Governors that Iran had lived up to its commitments under the JCPOA.
