Trump nixed Iran deal for ‘personality reasons’: Mail

Bloomberg

President Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear pact with Iran last year because it was signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, according to the latest UK diplomatic cables published in a British newspaper.
The emails, reportedly from Kim Darroch, who was Britain’s ambassador to the US until he quit following the first batch of leaks, centre on Boris Johnson’s last-ditch visit to Washington in May 2018, when he was still foreign secretary.
Johnson, now closing in on the prime minister’s position, tried in vain to get Trump to stick with the nuclear deal.
According to the Mail on Sunday, the leaked emails suggested Secretary of State Mike Pompeo showed signs he disagreed with Trump’s position.
Darroch also described how Trump’s advisers were at a loss to explain why the president was so determined to scrap the deal and they had no idea what to do next. The Trump administration “is set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism,” Darroch concluded in a cable sent after the Johnson meetings and leaked to the Mail.
The initial controversy over the diplomat’s cabled comments, in which he criticised the Trump administration as “inept” and “dysfunctional,” developed into a key element of the latest jousting between Johnson and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt for the Tory crown. It escalated further and even united the contenders when the Metropolitan Police issued a statement warning journalists to hand over any state secrets.
The Met backtracked, saying the police had “no intention of seeking to prevent editors from publishing stories in the public interest in a liberal democracy” but warning that any breach of the Official Secrets Act would constitute a criminal offense.
According to the Sunday Times, authorities have identified the person responsible for leaking the documents to the Mail. The suspect had access to historical Foreign Office files, which would rule out a computer hacker being responsible, according to the Times.