WASHINGTON: US President-elect, Donald Trump has hinted during his presidential election speeches that he would cancel the US-Iran nuclear deal.
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Signed in Vienna in July 2015 and in force since January, the agreement was made possible by 18 months of back-channel talks between Washington and arch-foe Tehran in 2012 and 2013.
But it was also, after the negotiations became public, a two-year joint effort for the so-called P5+1 — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, the United States and the European Union.
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And, once these powers and Iran signed it, the United Nations Security Council endorsed it as international law.
It was not uncontroversial. US allies Saudi Arabia and Israel in particular feared it would only delay Iran’s alleged quest for a bomb while emboldening it in other domains.
But neither these naysayers nor the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog, has caught Tehran’s Islamist regime undermining it, and it has become a key plank of world counter proliferation efforts.
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In Washington, however, the deal is still a political football and Obama’s Republican opponents — now led by President-elect Trump — have been scathing.