US move to quit Iran deal may spark showdown

Washington’s refusal to back the Iran nuclear deal is an attack on one of the world community’s biggest achievements in recent years, it is high time for its European and Middle East allies to speak out to prevent a potential crisis that would be worse than the North Korean dilemma, TASS quoted Chairman of Russia’s Federation Council (upper house) International Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev as saying Friday.

"Washington might goad Iran into refusing to fulfill its obligations and then blame Tehran for derailing the agreement. This unscrupulous tactic, to put it mildly, could nonetheless work. That’s why it is high time the United States’ allies in Europe and the Middle East to raise their voice before the world gets mired in another crisis that appears out of thin air, which would be worse than the North Korean one," the senator wrote on his Facebook page.

Kosachev noted that, instead of mentioning the facts related to the agreement, US President Donald Trump accused Iran of supporting terrorists, spreading violence, bloodshed and chaos in the Middle East and even the ongoing aggression. "The ease, with which Trump puts forward such serious accusations without any evidence, links the fate of the important international security treaty with his own emotional assessment of Iran and cannot fail to give rise to profound concern from those who breathed a sigh of relief in 2015, when a formula for solving the Iranian problem was found," the senator wrote.

In his view, reports indicating that Trump can declare a refusal to support the Iranian nuclear agreement with the subsequent resumption of sanctions only confirm that the US itself is becoming a much greater problem for the world than those [problems] that it is allegedly trying to solve, such as the North Korean, Iranian, Syrian and Ukrainian ones.

"Firstly, the issue at hand is what can be described as a much-anticipated and, without exaggeration, a hard-won multilateral agreement polished to perfection providing for a detailed action plan for 10-15 years and enshrined in the UN Security Council Resolution rather than a bilateral deal between the US and Iran. That’s why this is not an attack against Iran. This is an attack against one of the biggest achievements of the international community in recent years," the lawmaker emphasized.

The Washington Post earlier reported that Trump is expected to announce next week how the US will be implementing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program in the future. 

According to the newspaper, Trump actually plans to abandon the Iran deal in its current form, since it is "not in the national interest of the United States." 

The paper noted that the move "could eventually result in the resumption of US sanctions against Iran.".

Source: MENA