{"id":17540,"date":"2018-10-05T22:24:00","date_gmt":"2018-10-05T22:24:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17540"},"modified":"2018-10-05T22:24:00","modified_gmt":"2018-10-05T22:24:00","slug":"kerry-says-war-chances-rising-after-us-leaves-iran-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=17540","title":{"rendered":"Kerry says war chances rising after US leaves Iran deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<div data-io-article-url=\"http:\/\/www.arabnews.com\/node\/1383146\/middle-east\" readability=\"56\">\n<p>\nWASHINGTON: Former secretary of state John Kerry voiced fear Friday of conflict with Iran after the United States pulled out of a denuclearization deal, saying regional leaders had privately pressed him for military strikes.<br \/>Kerry spearheaded diplomacy that led to the 2015 agreement in which Iran promised Western powers, Russia and China to scale back its nuclear program drastically in return for sanctions relief.<br \/>By pulling out of the accord, President Donald Trump has \u201cmade it more likely that there will be conflict in the region because there are people there who would love to have the United States of America bomb Iran,\u201d the former senator and presidential candidate told the Council on Foreign Relations as he promotes his memoir, \u201cEvery Day is Extra.\u201d<br \/>Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, an outspoken critic of the Iran deal, had also asked then US president Barack Obama for the green light to bomb Iran, Kerry said.<br \/>While UN inspectors found that Iran was complying with the accord, Trump declared the deal to be a disaster for not addressing other US concerns with Iran including threats to Israel, support for militant moves such as Hezbollah and Tehran\u2019s missile program.<br \/>But Kerry said the United States was \u201cactually getting them to do things, quietly,\u201d including on easing the conflict in war-ravaged Yemen, and believed that President Hassan Rouhani was \u201ctrying to move the country in a different direction.\u201d<br \/>\u201cWhat Trump has done is now empower the guys in Iran who said don\u2019t deal with the United States, they\u2019ll burn you,\u201d Kerry said.<br \/>\u201cHe has made it more likely that if there is an implosion in Iran internally through pressure or otherwise, it will not be an unknown Jeffersonian democrat who is going to appear and take over, it will be the IRGC or another Ahmadinejad, and we will be worse off and the people of Iran will be worse off,\u201d he said, referring to the hard-line Revolutionary Guards and former firebrand president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.<br \/>Trump has lashed out at Kerry for meeting Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif since leaving office, accusing him of violating an obscure US law that prohibits private citizens from negotiating on disputes with foreign governments.<br \/>Kerry said Trump was seeking to distract from his own scandal related to alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and said it was normal for former officials to maintain communication with foreign counterparts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>WASHINGTON: Former secretary of state John Kerry voiced fear Friday of conflict with Iran after the United States pulled out of a denuclearization deal, saying regional leaders had privately pressed him for military strikes.Kerry spearheaded diplomacy that led to the 2015 agreement in which Iran promised Western powers, Russia and China to scale back its&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":17541,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/17541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}