Return To Iran Deal ‘Could Spark Middle East Nuclear Arms Race’

01/11/2021

The new US administration should not return to the spirit of the Iran deal, which could spark an arms race in the Middle East, former secretary of state and national security advisor Henry Kissinger warned during an online conference on Monday.

Kissinger criticized the 2015 Iran deal, which President Donald Trump left in 2018, and President-elect Joe Biden seeks to return to if Iran agrees to comply again with the agreement’s limitations on its nuclear program.

“We should not fool ourselves,” the 97-year-old diplomat, consultant and author said. “I don’t believe that the spirit [of the Iran deal], with a time limit and so many escape clauses, will do anything other than bring nuclear weapons all over the Middle East and therefore create a situation of latent tension that sooner or later will break out.

The current regime in Iran “don’t seem to find it possible to give up this combination of Islamist imperialism and threat,” he said. “The test case is the evolution of nuclear capacities in Iran, if these can be avoided.”

At the same time, Kissinger clarified: “I do not say we shouldn’t talk to them.”

Read More: Jerusalem Post