British Prime Minister Theresa May and her team appealed to President Trump in an 11th-hour bid to convince him not to take a step away from the Iran nuclear deal, according to United Kingdom officials.
May called Trump, while British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson reached Secretary of State Rex Tillerson to discourage the president from making an expected announcement that he believes the Iran deal is not in the national security interests of the U.S. The issue is one of the chief policy disagreements between May and Trump, who often have projected more of an affinity than Trump shows for other European leaders.
"The nuclear deal was a crucial agreement that neutralized [Iran's] nuclear threat," Johnson said in a statement released Tuesday evening after his call with Tillerson. "The UK supports the deal and stresses the importance of all parties continuing to uphold their commitments."
May's team made a similar argument to Trump."[May] reaffirmed the UK's strong commitment to the deal alongside our European partners, saying it was vitally important for regional security," according to a readout of the phone call. "The [prime minister] stressed that it was important that the deal was carefully monitored and properly enforced."
European officials — chiefly in the U.K., France, and Germany — have been making that case in private for months, without apparent success, and more recently in public. The British team beat the American side to the punch on Tuesday, releasing summaries of the conversations in advance of Trump administration readouts. But it's hardly clear that they persuaded the administration.
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01.20.2025