Kerry urges Congress to avoid 'gigantic mistake' on Iran deal

President Donald Trump last month decertified Iran’s compliance with the 2015 agreement, but stopped short of scrapping the deal outright, instead handing the issue over to Congress, AFP reported.

Kerry told the Chatham House international affairs think tank in London that the decision “was clearly made without relevance to any fact whatsoever” and criticized the involvement of Congress.

“It’s been flipped over to the Congress with instructions, you guys fix it. How the US Congress, which wasn’t part of the negotiations, which isn’t certified to be part of the negotiations, fixes an agreement which is working is beyond me,” he added.

“What President Trump regrettably has done by his invective against the deal, he’s polluted the pool in a way that whatever Congress does is going to be interpreted as their effort to kill the deal through the back door.”

Congress was given 60 days to decide whether to reimpose sanctions that were lifted in return for Tehran curbing its nuclear activities.

Kerry said there was a “great danger” that Congress could act unilaterally to alter the deal, narrowing Iran’s room for maneuver and “creating a downward spiral that becomes extraordinarily dangerous.”

“It would be a gigantic, historic mistake when dealing with nuclear weapons to allow anyone’s politics to get in the way and break apart an agreement that is preventing a country from pursuing a nuclear weapon,” he added.

Opponents of the deal claim that it does not go far enough to prevent Tehran from getting a nuclear weapon, and point to Iran’s recent missile launches.

Iran says the missile launches have nothing to do with going nuclear; they are purely defensive in nature, and are not part of the nuclear agreement.

Source:AFP