Trump tells Iran they should get “a better deal” with him now, before the U.S. election

Urging Iran to ‘Make the Big Deal,’ Trump Ties Nuclear Negotiations to Election, The president’s invitation came as international inspectors were said to have found that Iran had boosted its stockpile of low-enriched uranium in the past three months.

Two years ago, President Trump left what he called a “terrible” and “failed” nuclear deal with Iran that had been negotiated by his predecessor. By David E. Sanger, Farnaz Fassihi and Rick Gladstone June 5, 2020 WASHINGTON

— President Trump on Friday celebrated the return of an American imprisoned in Iran by urging Tehran to “make the Big deal” on its nuclear program, and dangled the possibility that they would get better terms if they negotiated before the presidential election, seeming to invite Tehran to help return him to office.

Mr. Trump’s offer was immediately rejected by the Iranian leadership, which now seems to harbor doubts that he will remain president, and is hunkering down to survive American-led sanctions until they see the results of the November election. ……. Ever since Mr. Trump chose to leave what he called a “terrible” and “failed” deal, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and others have said that the combination of escalating sanctions, diplomatic isolation and the threat of possible military force would prompt the Iranian government to come to the negotiating table. So far that has failed, and Mr. Trump’s offer on Friday was a remarkably transparent invitation to an adversary to give him a diplomatic win before what could be a close American election.

“Thank you to Iran,” the president wrTrote in a tweet about the release of a Navy veteran detained in Tehran, Michael R. White. “Don’t wait until after U.S. Election to make the Big deal. I’m going to win. You’ll make a better deal now!”

Aides to Mr. Pompeo and Mr. Trump declined to explain why, if the United States was negotiating in its own national interest, Iran might get preferential treatment for negotiating with Mr. Trump before the election……

“We had a deal when you entered office,” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, responded to Mr. Trump in a tweet on Friday. Iran and the other participants in the 2015 agreement — Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia and China — “never left the table,” he said. “Your advisers — most fired by now — made a dumb bet. Up to you to decide *when* you want to fix it.”

Hesameddin Ashena, the top policy adviser to President Hassan Rouhani of Iran also responded. “You are going down on November 3rd and we know that,” he tweeted. “So you’ll need to offer much more than Obama did!”…….. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear.html

June 8, 2020 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Iran, politics, politics international, USA

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