UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson Urges Trump to Keep ‘Flawed’ Iran Deal on Fox and Friends

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson appeared on Fox and Friends Monday to urge President Donald Trump not to pull out of the Iran Deal, just days before the May 12 deadline, when Trump must decide the plan’s fate.

Trump has called the agreement, reached in 2015 by the Obama administration, “the worst deal ever negotiated.” On the campaign trail, Trump vowed to “rip up” the agreement but, 16 months into his presidency, has yet to do so. Johnson, a proponent of the deal, said Monday morning that while Trump is “right to see flaws” in the Iran Deal, the answer is not to simply get rid of the agreement.

“We’ve got to fix the flaws in the deal. One of the most important is this sunset clause which means that after 2025, it allows — the current deal allows — Iran to go forward fast with enrichment programs which could lead to a nuclear weapon,” Johnson said.

“We need to find a way of fixing that,” the British foreign secretary added. “The president has been right to call attention to it. But you can’t do that without throwing the baby out with the bathwater, without scrapping the whole thing. Because if you do that, you have to answer the question, ‘what next?'”

“What if the Iranians do rush for a nuclear weapon? Are we seriously saying we’re going to bomb those facilities? Is that really a realistic possibility, or do we work with what we’ve got and push back on Iran together,” Johnson said.

Johnson’s Fox and Friends appearance was part of a much broader international media blitz during his visit to the U.S. On Monday, Johnson met with his American counterpart, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. Boris also penned an opinion editorial in the New York Times Monday, warning Trump it would be a “mistake” to pull out of the deal entirely.

Johnson at one point sparred with Kilmeade about Iran’s compliance with the deal, pushing back on the Fox News host’s assertions that the agreement is founded on “a false premise.”

Johnson further stated Trump would be deserving of a Nobel Peace Prize if he can find a way to get along with Iran, following the president’s role in the historic, formal end to the Korean War.

“If Trump can fix North Korea and the Iran nuclear deal then I don’t see why he’s any less of a candidate for the Nobel Peace Prize than Barack Obama,” Johnson told Sky News.

[image via screengrab]

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