美国国家公共电台 NPR Will Iran Deal Meet The Same Fate As A Past U.S.-North Korean Arms Deal?

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Will Iran Deal Meet The Same Fate As A Past U.S.-North Korean Arms Deal?

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Now, one of the promises Donald Trump² made on the campaign trail is that he would dismantle³ or renegotiate the deal with Iran that limits its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. This wouldn't be the first time a Republican administration walked away from an arms deal negotiated by Democrats⁴. NPR's Michele Kelemen takes a look at the last time this happened over North Korea.

MICHELE KELEMEN, BYLINE⁵: In 1994, the Clinton administration struck a deal with North Korea that would essentially⁶ freeze the North Korean nuclear program in exchange for aid. The so-called Agreed Framework was highly controversial in Congress. It eventually collapsed⁷ in 2002 when the Bush administration confronted North Korea with evidence that Pyongyang was cheating. David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security is predicting something similar when a Trump administration gets into office and decides how to proceed with Iran.

DAVID ALBRIGHT: I think they will probably throw the deal aside. I witnessed how the Bush administration killed the Agreed Framework, which was a deal we were supporting pretty heavily in the 1990s despite some misgivings⁸. They'll set it up so Iran will leave the deal.

KELEMEN: Albright says a lot depends on Trump's still unnamed foreign policy team. In the North Korean example, the then secretary of state pursued a different approach from the hardliners.

ALBRIGHT: In the Bush administration, Colin Powell put the brakes on a quick dropping of the Agreed Framework. And then once it was dropped, he also started a process to try to create a negotiating process to kind of get back to a better outcome.

KELEMEN: Neither the Bush administration, nor the Obama administration ever got to a better outcome with North Korea though. And that worries other experts including Melissa Hanham, who's with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California.

MELISSA HANHAM: And today we're looking at a country that's had five nuclear weapons tests and the worst relationship between the U.S. and North Korea since, you know, the start of the Korean War.

KELEMEN: She's hoping that President-elect Trump will bring in advisers⁹ who will think twice before scrapping¹⁰ the Iran nuclear deal, which at least buys the U.S. some time.

HANHAM: It is much more difficult to take nuclear weapons away from a country once they already have them. And with North Korea, while there is a spectrum¹¹ of opinion, I fall on the side where the Agreed Framework was our last best opportunity. And the windows have shrunk and shrunk and shrunk since then.

KELEMEN: Hanham says there is a lot of pessimism¹² in the arms control business these days.

HANHAM: The giant asterisk¹³ with Trump is that no one can predict what he's going to do. And unfortunately, that goes true for North Korea, too.

KELEMEN: When it comes to Iran, another arms control expert, Lacey Healy of the Stimson Center, says it could be difficult for Trump to renegotiate the deal because other countries are parties to it.

LACEY HEALY: This is going to be an interesting one, given his emphasis on the relationship with Russia. Russia is not going to want us to simply rip up this deal. They are one of our negotiating partners. And this deal is important to them.

KELEMEN: So if we see - in her words - the deal-maker Trump rather than the bombastic¹⁴ one, he will have to consider those relationships with Russia and with Europe. All eyes are on who he picks for secretary of state and other key foreign policy positions. Michele Kelemen, NPR News, Washington.