Trump, Macron call for ‘new’ nuclear deal with Iran US President Donald Trump and French counterpart Emmanuel Macron called for a “new” deal with Iran Tuesday, looking beyond divisions over a landmark nuclear accord that now hangs in the balance. SBS News 25 Apr 18 Trump pilloried a three-year old agreement designed to curb Iran’s nuclear program as “insane” and “ridiculous”, despite European pleas for him not to walk away from the accord.
Instead, Trump eyed a “grand bargain” that would also limit Iran’s ballistic missile program and support for militant groups across the Middle East.
“I think we will have a great shot at doing a much bigger, maybe, deal,” said Trump, stressing that any new accord would have to be built on “solid foundations.”………
Macron, visiting Washington on a landmark state visit, admitted after meeting Trump that he did not know whether the US president would walk away from the nuclear deal when a May 12 decision deadline comes up.
“I can say that we have had very frank discussions on that, just the two of us,” Macron told a joint press conference with Trump at his side.
Putting on a brave face, he said he wished “for now to work on a new deal with Iran” of which the nuclear accord could be one part.
Trump — true to his background in reality TV — teased his looming decision.
…… Neither Trump nor Macron indicated what Iran would get in return for concessions on its ballistic programs or activities in the Middle East.Iran, meanwhile, has warned it will ramp up enrichment activities if Trump walks away from the accord, prompting Trump to issue a blunt warning.
Iran nuclear deal: Macron urges Trump to stick with 2015 accord http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-43858040, 23 Apr 18 French President Emmanuel Macron has urged his US counterpart, Donald Trump, to stick with the Iran nuclear deal, saying there is no better option.
He was speaking to Fox News ahead of a three-day state visit to the US starting on Monday.
Mr Trump has threatened to abandon the deal, which limits Iran’s nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief, unless it is toughened up.
He has until 12 May to decide whether to restore US sanctions against Iran.
Correspondents say such a move would effectively kill the landmark agreement between Iran and six major western powers.
The two leaders are expected to address the issue when Mr Trump hosts Mr Macron this week.
Mr Macron told Fox News he had no “plan B” for the deal if the US decided to restore sanctions, and said the US should stay in the agreement as long as there was no better option.
“Let’s present this framework because it’s better than the sort of North Korean-type situation.”
He said the two leaders had “a very special relationship” and he wanted to address ballistic missiles as part of the deal – a key demand of the US president – as well as work to contain Iran’s influence in the region.
President Trump is also demanding that signatories to the deal agree permanent restrictions on Iran’s uranium enrichment. Under the current deal they are set to expire in 2025.
He has put pressure on his European co-signatories to address these issues before the 12 May deadline, when he needs to decide whether to sign a waiver giving sanctions relief to Iran.
Under US law, passed during the Obama administration, the president needs to sign these waivers every 120-180 days acknowledging Iran’s compliance with the deal.
When Mr Trump signed the last one, in January, he said it was a “last chance” to change the accord, before the US withdraws.
Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif warned on Saturday that his country was prepared to resume its nuclear programme “at much greater speed”, if the US withdrew from the accord.
Mr Macron also appealed to the US president not to pull troops out of Syria after the final defeat of so-called Islamic State, saying that would “leave the floor” to Iran and Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
North and South Korea set up first hotline between leaders ahead of summit , ABC News 21 Apr 18
North and South Korea have installed the first telephone hotline between their leaders as they prepare for a rare summit next week aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff with Pyongyang.
Key points: Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in will make their first call before next week’s summit Their meeting will be only the third since the end of the Korean War in 1953 Kim Jong-un could also meet Donald Trump in May or June
South Korea’s presidential office said a successful test call was conducted on the hotline between Seoul’s presidential Blue House and Pyongyang’s powerful State Affairs Commission.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un plan to make their first telephone conversation sometime before their face-to-face meeting next Friday at the border truce village of Panmunjom.
Too early to celebrate?
Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un have agreed to meet — but what’s the significance of the meeting and is it too early to have a sigh of relief?
“…….. Why isn’t Trump likely to succeed? The first reason is that nuclear weapons are the ultimate security guarantee.
……….If Saddam Hussein had been able to acquire nuclear weapons, he would still be in power, not dead from a hangman’s noose.Kim has generously agreed not to rule out the complete denuclearization that the administration demands. But that’s a long way from signing up for it. He may be willing to place some limits on his nuclear arsenal or his missile tests, but such a modest outcome would be hard for Trump to accept.
The second reason to expect failure is that Trump has indicated we can’t be trusted. Under the Obama administration, Iran agreed to dismantle much of its nuclear infrastructure and submit to a strict inspections regime. U.N. inspectors have repeatedly affirmed that Iran is complying with the terms.
Yet Trump, his national security adviser, John Bolton, and his nominee for secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, all detest the accord. The president said in January that if the Iranian agreement isn’t amended to his satisfaction — which is unlikely — he’ll abandon it.
He has until May 12 to decide whether to continue waiving U.S. sanctions on Iran, and Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker predicted last month that he won’t. The lesson for North Korea is that even if one president agrees to certain obligations, the next one may renege.
In any case, Trump will have to confront an unpleasant prospect in the talks with North Korea. Kim is not about to trade a cow for a bag of magic beans. Getting him to surrender something the North Koreans value so highly and have invested so much to achieve would require comparable concessions on our part.
Trump leaves open possibility of bailing on meeting with North Korea leader, Military Times, By: Matthew Pennington, The Associated Press , 19 Apr 18, WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said that although he’s looking ahead optimistically to a historic summit meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un he could still pull out if he feels it’s “not going to be fruitful.”
Trump said that CIA Director Mike Pompeo and Kim “got along really well” in their recent secret meeting, and he declared, “We’ve never been in a position like this” to address worldwide concerns over North Korea’s nuclear weapons.
But speaking alongside Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday, after the allies met at Trump’s Florida resort, he made clear that he’d still be ready to pull the plug on what is being billed as an extraordinary meeting between the leaders of longtime adversaries.
“If I think that if it’s a meeting that is not going to be fruitful we’re not going to go. If the meeting when I’m there is not fruitful I will respectfully leave the meeting,” Trump told a news conference. He also said that a U.S.-led “maximum pressure” campaign of tough economic sanctions on North Korea would continue until the isolated nation “denuclearizes.”………
Other than the threat posed to by North Korea’s weapons of mass destruction, another issue overhanging the summit plans is the fate of three Americans detained there. Trump said that was under negotiation and there was a “good chance” of winning their release, but he wouldn’t say whether that was a precondition for sitting down with Kim.
Pompeo raised the question of the three Americans in his meeting with Kim, a U.S. official said.
Trump also said he had promised Abe he would work hard for the return of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea. Tokyo says at least a dozen Japanese said to have been taken in the 1970s and 1980s remain unaccounted for.
Interview A conversation with Helen Caldicott From the forthcoming issue (May 2018)Taylor and Francis online, 17 Apr 18 Dan Drollette Jr For decades, anti-nuclear weapons campaigner Helen Caldicott (helencaldicott.com) has been educating people about the effects of nuclear weaponry and issuing rousing calls to action. A practicing pediatrician from Australia, Caldicott was the subject of an Oscar-winning short film, If You Love This Planet, and is the author of 12 books.In this Skype interview from her home in Sydney, Australia, the 79-year-old Caldicott doesn’t pull punches. For nearly six decades, she has been taking on the powers that be, in joyously feisty terms: She has said that the US Defense Department should be re-named the Killing Department and characterized Barack Obama as an “intelligent, lovely man, who failed the world” when it came to eliminating nuclear weapons. She considers the movie Dr Strangelove more of a documentary than a satire, labeled arms manufacturers “wicked,” and called American politicians “corporate prostitutes.”
And of the current president, Caldicott said: “We’ve got a man in charge who I think has never read a book, and who knows nothing about global politics, or his own country’s politics. Who operates with his own kind of sordid intuition. And he’s putting people in every department committed to destroying that department. He’s absolutely destroying the infrastructure of America.”
Noting that it was International Women’s Month, Caldicott had one thing to say to young women: “We need to take over, because we’re on the short course to annihilation, and we need to say to men ‘Look, stand aside, you need your bottom smacked.’ ”
Yet for someone who has spent a lifetime fighting vigorously against the specter of nuclear annihilation, Caldicott reveals that she is remarkably pessimistic about humanity’s chances. Caldicott said that she wants her tombstone to read: “She tried.”
Editor’s note: This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity.
……..I noticed there seem to be a lot of people in the anti-nuclear weapons movement with medical backgrounds.
Helen Caldicott:
It’s a medical problem. And explaining the medical dangers of nuclear war was a very good way to teach people what the danger is, and to bring it home to their city. That approach was – and is – very powerful. During the 1980s, when I was one of the leaders of the nuclear weapons freeze movement and one of the founding presidents of PSR, we at PSR held symposia on the medical effects of nuclear war at various universities, all around the country. It started at Harvard, where we had George Kistiakowsky, a physicist who had been in the Manhattan Project as an explosives expert (https://www.manhattanprojectvoices.org/oral-histories/george-kistiakowskys-interview). It was quite wonderful.
Although afterwards, some journalists did say: “What are doctors talking about this for, this is a political issue.” And we said no, it’s a medical issue, because it will create the final medical epidemic of the human race……….
…… I think we’re actually in a much more dangerous situation than we were during the height of the Cold War, though no one’s really taking any notice. I mean, Dan Ellsberg went to 14 different publishers before Bloomsbury published his book. And my latest book, Sleepwalking to Armageddon, (https://thenewpress.com/books/sleepwalking-armageddon) is not selling very well at all. It seems like society is practicing psychic numbing and manic denial. We’re into clothes and food, and all sorts of things like that, while life on the planet just hangs in the balance………
Of course. America’s economy is built on killing. It’s the Killing Department, not the Defense Department. There’s no defense from nuclear weapons. It’s all run by voracious, wicked corporations, such as Lockheed-Martin, General Electric, General Dynamics, and the like. And many American politicians are corporate prostitutes. ……
……..Dan Drollette: How would you characterize Trump and his administration?
Helen Caldicott:
Trump is a dolt. He’s an idiot. We’ve got a man in charge who I think has never read a book, and who knows nothing about global politics, or his own county’s politics. Who operates with his own kind of sordid intuition. And he’s putting people in every department committed to destroying that department. He’s absolutely destroying the infrastructure of America.
When you think of all the brave, heroic Americans who worked hard all their lives to set up wonderful laws to protect the environment and protect the people and protect the children and protect the Earth, what’s happening is shameful. It’s all being undone, and I can’t understand why.
……..Dan Drollette:
What about his administration’s doings on the world stage?
Helen Caldicott:
For some reason, Trump likes Putin and the Russians. Well, I think I know why. I think that they and the oligarchs have funded Trump for years and years and years. It’s mostly, I think, about money. Trump wants to get on well with them, which is good because, you know, there’s almost certainly about 40 hydrogen bombs targeted on New York as we speak. So, therefore, it is imperative that America get on well with the Russians and in fact, push for bi-lateral nuclear disarmament. So, from that perspective, it makes me feel a little bit … less anxious.
………I think that enlarging NATO right up to the Russian border was extremely provocative. That policy largely came about because of people like Lockheed-Martin president Norman Augustine, who I’ve previously described elsewhere as “commander-in-chief of the Pentagon.” Because after the Cold War ended, Lockheed-Martin et al had nowhere to make money. They’re going to make money by making bombs, killing people, and then making more bombs.
So, Augustine set off on a journey to all the newly released little countries – Lithuania, Latvia, etcetera – to say “Look, if you want to be a part of NATO and have a democracy, you have to spend about $3 billion on armaments.” (http://www.nytimes.com/1997/06/29/world/arms-makers-see-bonanza-in-selling-nato-expansion.html) And let’s be frank: NATO is in fact America. So that was all well and good for Lockheed-Martin, even though it meant that America went back on its promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not be enlarged. As a consequence, there are NATO missiles right up to the Russian border, on what had been territory that was previously friendly to Russian, which is extremely provocative. Imagine if the situation were reversed, and Canada became part of the Warsaw Pact, and they put Warsaw Pact-missiles on the US border. How do you think America would react? So that’s problem number one………https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/MBkXvHtz5QyAfikSM8Cv/full
South Korean President Moon Jae-in said North Korea might end its nuclear program while the US keeps its troops in South Korea. We’ve been here before. Vox By Alex Ward@AlexWard Voxalex.ward@vox.com
North Korea may have just announced a major concession ahead of talks with President Donald Trump.
According to South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Thursday, North Korea is ready for “complete denuclearization,” meaning that it would stop improving its nuclear weapons and missiles that can hit America and its allies. What’s more, North Korea would do that — and the US can keep its troops in South Korea.
If North Korea is seriously considering that, it would be a marked shift from its past stance. When Pyongyang usually talks about denuclearization, US troop removal is always a sticking point. Pyongyang fears that US troops are only waiting to invade North Korea, and so it wants to keep its nuclear arsenal to deter that incursion. But now, it’s possible America’s 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula can stay as North Korea winds down its program.
Pyongyang’s new stance, if true, could change the tenor of Trump’s potential meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in late May or early June. Abraham Denmark, a former top Asia security official at the Pentagon, tweeted on Thursday that North Korea’s announcement could mean Trump and Kim may strike an agreement.
“Looks like a deal may actually be coming together,” Denmark said. “Shaping up to be a comprehensive package that involves a peace regime, denuclearization, and eventual normalization of relations.”
Hundreds of lawmakers from Germany, France, and Britain have called on their counterparts in the U.S. Congress to support the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and six world powers, calling it a “major diplomatic breakthrough.”
The initiative came as U.S. President Donald Trump has set a May 12 deadline to either improve or scrap the deal providing Iran with relief from sanctions in return for curbs on its atomic program.
“We were able to impose unprecedented scrutiny on the Iranian nuclear program, dismantle most of their nuclear enrichment facilities, and drastically diminish the danger of a nuclear arms race,” reads a statement signed by some 500 MPs from the German, British, and French national parliaments and posted online on April 19.
Britain, Germany, and France are signatories to the nuclear accord, along with the United States, China, and Russia.
Trump accuses Tehran of violating the spirit of the agreement and has called on European powers to “fix” what he says are the “terrible flaws” of the agreement. He wants new restrictions to be imposed on Tehran’s nuclear and missile programs.
“It is the U.S.’s and Europe’s interest to prevent nuclear proliferation in a volatile region and to maintain the transatlantic partnership as a reliable and credible driving force of world politics,” the European lawmakers said.
They wrote that abandoning the accord would result “in another source of devastating conflict in the Middle East and beyond,” would “diminish the value of any promises or threats made by our countries,” and would damage “our credibility as international partners in negotiation, and more generally, to diplomacy as a tool to achieve peace and ensure security.”
“We therefore urge you to stand by the coalition we have formed to keep Iran‘s nuclear threat at bay,” they added.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will both travel to Washington next week on separate official visits, in part to convince Trump not to pull the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran.
Russian President Vladimir Putin warns of global ‘chaos’ if West strikes Syria again, ABC News 16 Apr 18, Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that further Western attacks on Syria would bring chaos to world affairs, as Washington prepared to increase pressure on Russia with new economic sanctions.
Key points:
Vladimir Putin said further attacks on Syria will bring “chaos” in world affairs
America accused Russia of blocking attempts to investigate Syria’s chemical weapons capabilities
New sanctions against Russia will target companies linked to Syria
In a telephone conversation with his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani, Mr Putin and Mr Rouhani agreed the Western strikes had damaged the chances of achieving a political resolution in the seven-year Syria conflict, according to a Kremlin statement.
“Vladimir Putin, in particular, stressed that if such actions committed in violation of the UN Charter continue, then it will inevitably lead to chaos in international relations,” the Kremlin statement said.
Syria strikes: The real impact is in Moscow, Analysis by Tim Lister, CNN April 14, 2018 After nearly a week of tension that sometimes verged on the surreal, the US and its allies finally carried out strikes against regime targets in Syria on Friday night. The strikes, more limited than once seemed likely, were designed to deter the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons once and for all.
Their real impact will be on the plummeting relationship between Moscow and the West.
The arguments over what happened in Douma on April 7 and who was responsible have dragged US-Russian relations to their lowest ebb in decades. On both sides, the
(CNN)After nearly a week of tension that sometimes verged on the surreal, the US and its allies finally carried out strikes against regime targets in Syria on Friday night. The strikes, more limited than once seemed likely, were designed to deter the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons once and for all.
Their real impact will be on the plummeting relationship between Moscow and the West.
The arguments over what happened in Douma on April 7 and who was responsible have dragged US-Russian relations to their lowest ebb in decades. On both sides, the As the week progressed, Russian officials veered between insisting there had been no attack, that rebel groups had staged it and ultimately that the United Kingdom had planned it in a conspiracy with Syria’s White Helmets volunteer rescue group……..
The deterrent effect
Syria pledged to give up all its chemical weapons in 2013 under a Russian-mediated deal after a horrendous attack on civilians not far from the site of the last week’s incident. The alternative, threatened by President Obama, was military action.
Either Syria didn’t surrender all of its stocks (the view in France and Germany) or it started producing chemical weapons again.
Chemical weapons have killed a tiny fraction of the more than 400,000 Syrians who have died in the civil war. But to the US and much of the international community, the use of these weapons is especially abhorrent.British Prime Minister Theresa May spoke of the “erosion” of the global ban on chemical weapons, while the senior UN official for disarmament, Thomas Markram, told the Security Council on Monday: “The use of chemical weapons cannot become the status quo, nor can we continue to fail the victims of such weapons.”
That was the Trump Administration’s view when it launched cruise missiles against a Syrian airbase a year ago following the sarin attack on civilians at Khan Sheikhoun. Those strikes were meant as a deterrent; as such they failed. As the International Rescue Committee said this week, the response to Khan Sheikhoun “did not change the calculus of the warring parties nor make Syrian civilians safer.”
The choice this time was a larger deterrent — or be seen as a blowhard. But escalation brings with it risks of a wider conflict, risks the Russians have been keen to proclaim……
A nadir for Washington and Moscow
The greatest impact of these strikes is that they will deepen the visceral hostility that characterizes relations between the US and Russia, now at their lowest ebb in decades……..
Syria: US, British and French forces launch air strikes in response to chemical weapons attack,
US, British and French forces have pounded chemical weapons sites in Syria with air strikes in response to an alleged poison gas attack that killed dozens in the rebel-held town of Douma last week.
Key points:
US, UK and France hit three chemical weapons sites in Syria
US Defence Secretary says strikes were a “one-time shot”
Strikes biggest intervention yet by Western powers against Assad regime
In a televised address to the nation, US President Donald Trump said the three nations had “marshalled their righteous power against barbarism and brutality”.
The strikes were the biggest intervention by Western powers against President Bashar al-Assad in the country’s seven-year-old civil war, which has pitted the US and its allies against Russia.
The Pentagon said the strikes targeted a research centre in Damascus, along with a chemical weapons storage facility and command post west of Homs……
British Prime Minister Theresa May said the strikes were not about intervening in a civil war nor were they about a regime change.
“We cannot allow the use of chemical weapons to become normalised within Syria, on the streets of the UK or anywhere else in our world,” Ms May said…….
Donald Trump ‘to tell Kim Jong-un to scrap nuclear arsenal within year in return for US embassy in Pyongyang’ , Julian Ryall, Tokyo, Nicola Smith, Telegraph UK Taipei
President Donald Trump is expected to demand that Pyongyang abolish its nuclear weapons capability within a year when he sits down for talks with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean dictator, but will offer to open an embassy in the North’s capital and provide humanitarian assistance as an incentive.
The details offer a sense of the rapid pace of progress towards talks although analysts suggest the timetable may be overambitious.
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