International powers that signed the nuclear deal with Iran have hit back strongly at President Donald Trump’s repudiation of the landmark pact. Germany, France, the UK and Russia rallied together with the EU late on Friday in support of an agreement they said boosted international security by stopping Iran from building atomic weapons. “We can’t afford as an international community to dismantle a nuclear agreement that’s working and delivering — especially now,” Federica Mogherini, the EU’s foreign policy chief, said in Brussels. “It’s not a bilateral agreement. It doesn’t belong to any single country — and it’s not up to one single country to terminate it.”
The leaders of France, Germany and the UK said in a joint statement that they were all “committed” to the deal and were “concerned by the possible implications” of Mr Trump’s refusal to recertify it. President Emmanuel Macron of France, Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Theresa May, the UK prime minister, urged the Trump administration and the US Congress to “consider the implications to the security of the US and its allies” before taking steps that might further undermine the deal. Sergei Ryabkov, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, said that Mr Trump’s position was “extremely troubling”, RIA news agency reported. Moscow now saw its main task as preventing the nuclear deal from collapsing, Mr Ryabkov was quoted as saying.