Former US President Barack Obama said it was unrealistic to expect that any deal between US President Donald Trump and Tehran would mark a “significant improvement” over his own nuclear pact 11 years ago.
In interview excerpts released Sunday on ABC News talk show “This Week,” the former President also suggested it was better to negotiate a deal that falls short of all of Washington's requirements in order to avoid an outright war.
“It is doubtful that any agreement that arises is going to be significantly different or a significant improvement from the deal that we had in the first place,” Obama said, referring to 2015's landmark pact that Trump abandoned, according to AFP.
Obama added that his own deal “had worked for a long stretch of time before... the United States pulled out of it.”
US and Israeli forces sparked the Middle East war in late February when they launched strikes against Iran. For months, Trump has bandied about a potential peace deal with the Iranian republic.
The US President has stressed the deal would forever block Iran's ability to produce a nuclear weapon and would lead to the immediate opening of the blockaded Strait of Hormuz.
According to Obama, the troubled progress of a new US-Iran deal is a reminder that Washington can not “just bully our way or bomb our way to solutions” instead of engaging in comprehensive diplomacy.
“You'd think we would have learned that lesson by now,” Obama said.
On Monday, US and Iranian officials said they had agreed on a framework to end their war, halt the US blockade of Iran and reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a preliminary pact that sent oil prices falling but leaves the fate of Iran's nuclear program to further negotiations.
“The Deal with the Islamic Republic of Iran is now complete,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform around 5:30 pm ET local time in Washington (2130 GMT) on Sunday. His post came shortly after Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, whose country has served as a mediator, announced a deal had been struck early on Monday local time, according to Reuters.
The memorandum of understanding is scheduled to be officially signed on Friday in Switzerland.
Before the deal was announced, a senior Iranian official told Reuters that, under the terms of the draft, the US would agree to release $25 billion of frozen Iranian assets. The Trump administration has previously said any release of Iranian money would only take place once Iran has fulfilled certain conditions under a peace deal.
A US official, also speaking before the announcement, said the agreement would ultimately lead to the dismantling of Iran's nuclear program, with its stockpile of highly enriched uranium to be destroyed and removed. The senior Iranian official said the draft deal would allow Iran, which denies seeking a nuclear bomb, to dilute its enriched uranium inside the country.
