‘The US is disregarding its allies’ – Jarrett Blanc, Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Intl Peace on US pull-out from Iran deal

Following the Trump administration’s announcement to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the Iran deal, EU signatories – the UK, France, Germany - have been in talks with Iran to salvage the nuclear accord. 

Senior Fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Jarrett Blanc joins Oksana Boyko to discuss the fallout of the US decision on relations with its European allies, and what the US exit is really about. 

“From the US perspective, there are only bad answers here. Either you’ve got Europe essentially isolating the [US] because they find the way to save the deal, or you’ve got Europe failing to save the deal and Iran returning to unconstrained enrichment, which is a huge problem for us, for Europe and for the world.”

Despite the Europeans urging Washington to remain part of the deal, Trump still opted to quit. “This clearly isn’t the way allies behave towards one another,” Blanc says. “The US is disregarding the needs and interests of its allies.” 

“The very fact that Europe has shifted from negotiating with the US to negotiating with Iran is a strong rebuke to the decision President Trump made,” Blanc says. 

The US exit from the nuclear agreement was not about concerns that Iran violated it, Blanc says. “President Trump is trying to tear down on the accomplishments of his predecessor. He doesn’t have policy objectives, he just wants to disparage Barack Obama,” claims Blanc, who was a former US State Department coordinator for Iran nuclear implementation. 

“If the concerns were on the nuclear program, the solution was the JCPOA,” he says. 

Tune and see the whole interview on the next edition of Worlds Apart.