Iran rejects Trump and Macron's latest nuclear deal proposals

Iranian leader said France and US not authorised to alter landmark 2015 agreement

Iran’s president has rejected a proposal to change the international deal regulating the country’s nuclear programme, mocking the suggestion outlined by Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump and dismissing the US leader as “a tradesman”.

Speaking in Washington during a three-day state visit, Mr Macron proposed a new deal that he hoped would answer concerns raised by the US president and ensure Washington did not pull out. “This is the only way to bring about stability,” he had said.

But the following day, the Iranian president Hassan Rouhani claimed the two leaders had no right to renegotiate the the terms of the 2015 accord, brokered by seven parties.

He also poured scorn on Mr Trump, saying he was not qualified to comment on international affairs.

“You don’t have any background in politics,” he said in a televised speech, according to Reuters. “You don’t have any background in law. You don’t have any background on international treaties.

“Together with a leader of a European country they say: ‘We want to decide on an agreement reached by seven parties.’ What for? With what right?”

The French president proposed a “new” Iran nuclear deal to build on the one currently in place, a gamble that he hoped will convince Mr Trump not to pull out of the deal.

Under the terms of the arrangement, the US president is required to recertify it every 90 days or leave its fate to Congress. The next date for Mr Trump to make such a decision on 12 May.

“I would like us to have a new deal with the four pillars that already exist in the current agreement,” Mr Macron said during a joint press conference in the White House.

Mr Trump has fiercely criticised a three-year-old deal reached by world powers to curb Iran’s programme, and repeatedly threatened to pull the US out. Even when he appeared with Mr Macron, he criticised the deal that was brokered by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

However, he concluded the press conference by looking to Mr Macron and saying: “Nobody knows what I’m going to do on the 12th, though Mr President, you have a pretty good idea.”

He added: “We can change and we can be flexible. In life, you have to be flexible.”

The other powers that signed the agreement with Iran – Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France – have all said they want to preserve it. Many nations see it as the best hope of preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear bomb, and of heading off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

Mr Macron’s proposals aims to block any Iranian nuclear activity until 2025 and beyond, address Iran’s ballistic missile programme and generate conditions for a political solution to contain Iran in Yemen, Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Senior Iranian officials have said repeatedly its ballistic missile programme is not up for negotiation.

Richard Nephew, a senior research scholar at Columbia University and author of the The Art of Sanctions, told The Independent talk of additional or supplementary elements being added to the 2015 deal was nothing new.

He said he was heartened by Mr Trump’s statement that he was willing to consider Mr Macron’s proposal, even given the US president’s habit of walking away from pledges he once vocally supported.

He said he also believed Mr Rouhani “could live” with supplementary elements to the deal, which the Iranian president did not want to see torn up.

Yet he warned: “There are an awful lot of people in Washington who want to see this deal fail, and two of them happen to be the president’s top advisers – [Mr Trump’s nominee for secretary of state, Mike] Pompeo and [national security adviser John] Bolton.”

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will hold talks with Mr Trump in Washington later in the week, as part of a coordinated European effort to keep the US in the deal.

In London, British Prime Minister Theresa May’s spokesman said the UK was supportive of Mr Macron’s efforts.

“We are working closely with our allies on how to address the range of challenges Iran poses in the Middle East, including those issues that President Macron proposed a new deal might cover,” the spokesman said.

In Geneva, the US’s non-proliferation envoy Christopher Ford, said Washington was not seeking to reopen or renegotiate the JCPOA Iran nuclear deal, but hoped to stay in it to fix its flaws with a supplementary agreement.

“We are not aiming to renegotiate the JCPOA or reopen it or change its terms,” Mr Ford told reporters on the sidelines of a nuclear non-proliferation conference.

“We are seeking a supplemental agreement that would in some fashion layer upon it a series of additional rules - restrictions, terms, parameters, whatever you want to call it - that help answer these challenges more effectively.”

In an address to the Joint Houses of Congress on Wednesday, Mr Macron said of the 2015 deal: “We signed it at the initiative of the United States. We signed it, both the United States and France, that is why we cannot say that we should get rid of it like that.

“We will not leave the floor to the absence of rule. We will not leave the floor to this conflict of powers in the Middle East.”