FOREIGN POLICY/IRAN/NATIONAL SECURITY/NORTH KOREA/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The planned meeting between President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by May will make it more likely the administration will kill the Iranian nuclear agreement, some current and former western officials said. … Wendy Sherman, the lead U.S. negotiator on the Iran deal who also led years of diplomacy with North Korea in the Clinton administration, said ‘the logic is that if the United States leaves’ the Iran deal, it would undermine Washington’s credibility. ‘However the president may, because of the way he operates, believe that somehow, tearing it up, will say that he won’t negotiate what he calls a *bad deal.* That would be a disaster because he would then have two nuclear crises on his hands at the same time,’ she said. Another senior western diplomat said the Kim talks are likely bad news for the Iran agreement, which lifted most international sanctions in exchange for temporary but tight restrictions on most Iranian nuclear work. … Richard Nephew, a former top U.S. Treasury official who was part of the U.S. negotiating team with Iran, said the apparent breakthrough with Pyongyang could give Mr. Trump the kind of bipartisan backing that lifts political pressure on him from Republicans to abandon the Iran agreement.”
– Laurence Norman, “Trump-Kim Meeting Could Have Negative Implications for Iranian Nuclear Deal, Officials Say,” The Wall Street Journal online, Mar. 10, 2018 7:57am