As expected Trump seems to be walking back promises about moving embassy to Jerusalem and dismantling Iran deal

update CBS News - how says he is not sure he wants to carry out his threat of appointing a special prosecutor to get Hillary Clinton

Times of Israel

Appearing to walk back statements made by president-elect and other advisers, Walid Phares says nuclear pact will be ‘renegotiated,’ US mission will only be moved to Jerusalem under ‘consensus,’ brokering Israeli-Palestinian peace deal will be top priority

A senior adviser to President-elect Donald Trump said the new US leader will “review” the Iran nuclear agreement, but will stop short of ripping up the landmark international pact.

Walid Phares, one of Trump’s top foreign policy advisers, also signaled that Trump might not move the US Embassy to Jerusalem immediately and indicated he would make negotiating an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal a priority right off the bat

The comments appeared to represent a break with some comments made by other Trump advisers and the president-elect himself, and highlighted persisting confusion over what the contours of a Trump administration’s foreign policy may look like.

Speaking to BBC Radio on Thursday, Phares said the nuclear deal, which Trump has railed against and vowed to dismantle, would instead be renegotiated with Tehran.

“Ripping up is maybe a too strong of word, he’s gonna take that agreement, it’s been done before in international context, and then review it,” he said, according to a CNN recording of the interview.

“He will take the agreement, review it, send it to Congress, demand from the Iranians to restore a few issues or change a few issues, and there will be a discussion,” Phares added. “It could be a tense discussion but the agreement as is right now — $750 billion to the Iranian regime without receiving much in return and increasing intervention in four countries — that is not going to be accepted by the Trump administration.”

During the election campaign, Trump described the nuclear deal as “disastrous” and said it would be his “number one priority” to dismantle it.

Yet he also sowed confusion when he said he would demand greater oversight over the deal and enforce it, at a speech to the pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC in March. In that same speech, he also said he would dismantle the deal.

“We must enforce the terms of the previous deal to hold Iran totally accountable. And we will enforce it like you’ve never seen a contract enforced before, folks, believe me,” he said then.

On Thursday, State Department spokesman Mark Toner warned that nothing was stopping Trump from tearing up the agreement, rebuffing comments from Iranian President Hassan Rouhani that the pact was enshrined by the United Nations Security Council and could therefore not be canceled by one party.

The agreement, reached in July 2014 to thwart suspected work toward an atomic weapon, requires Iran to curb its nuclear enrichment activities in exchange for sanctions relief.

Israel was and remains the world’s leading critic of the deal, calling it a “historic mistake” and arguing that it falls woefully short of preventing Tehran from obtaining nuclear weapons.

Toner said if Trump pulls out of the agreement, it could fall apart and lead to Iran restarting work toward a bomb.

It’s not clear if Iran, which remains deeply distrustful of the United States and has complained of receiving a raw deal under the nuclear pact, would be open to renegotiating the agreement, the hard-fought result of years of intensive diplomatic activity.

Will move embassy ‘under consensus’

Phares also told the BBC that while Trump was committed to moving the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, as other presidential candidates have vowed, he would not do so unilaterally.

“Many presidents of the United States have committed to do that, and he said as well that he will do that, but he will do it under consensus,” Phares said.

Phares did not elaborate on what consensus would be sought for such a move, which would break with decades of precedent and put Washington at odds with nearly all United Nations member states.[...]