FOREIGN POLICY/IRAN/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump is coming under mounting pressure from European allies and fellow Republicans to preserve the Iran nuclear deal. With the president widely expected to disavow the agreement when he outlines his Iran strategy on Friday [10-13-17], defenders and even erstwhile opponents of the deal are urging him not to unravel it completely.
Mr. Trump’s top national security aides are united behind a plan to decertify the deal, but leave it in place, with a goal of revising its terms. But in pursuing that course, the president will set off a volatile sequence of events that some warn could end up mortally wounding the agreement.
On Capitol Hill, lawmakers will have to decide whether to reimpose punitive sanctions on Tehran, a move that would almost certainly scuttle the 2015 deal that was brokered by world powers. In European capitals, allies are showing signs of resisting pressure to join the United States in trying to renegotiate its terms…
Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain called Mr. Trump on Tuesday to urge him to uphold the deal, adding that it should be ‘carefully monitored and properly enforced,’ according to a spokesman for 10 Downing Street. The British foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, reinforced that message in a call to Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson…
Lawmakers in the House and Senate remained largely in the dark on Wednesday as to Mr. Trump’s precise plans, even as congressional leaders prepared for the likelihood that the deal’s fate would end up in their laps by week’s end. Other lawmakers, including some Republicans once critical of the deal, called on Mr. Trump to preserve it himself.”
-Mark Landler and Nicholas Fandos, “Growing Chorus Confronts Trump Against Leaving Nuclear Deal,” The New York Times online, Oct. 11, 2017