Obama Predicts Trump Won’t Scrap Iran Nuclear Deal as President

EghtesadOnline: President Barack Obama said he doubts President-elect Donald Trump will scrap a deal with Iran to curtail the country’s nuclear weapons aspirations because the agreement is working.

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15 November 2016

When the accord was struck in 2015, "the main argument against it was that Iran wouldn’t abide by the deal," Obama said Monday at a White House news conference. "We now have over a year of evidence that they have abided by the deal."

Trump, a Republican, said during his campaign that the Iran agreement was a bad deal and that he would force the Islamic Republic to renegotiate it. He has not addressed the agreement since winning the Nov. 8 election. He and Obama met on Thursday for about 90 minutes to discuss the transition from Obama’s administration to Trump’s, including current policies Obama hopes will continue after the Jan. 20 inauguration, Bloomberg reported.

"My suspicion is that when the president-elect comes in and is consulting with his fellow Republicans on the Hill, that they will look at the facts," Obama said. "To unravel a deal that’s working and preventing Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon would be hard to explain," particularly if it leaves Iran free to reconstitute its weapons programs, he said.