Britain’s now former ambassador to the U.S. was convinced last year that President Donald Trump scrapped the Iran nuclear pact in part simply because it was forged by his White House predecessor, Barack Obama, according to another leaked diplomatic memo.
Sir Kim Darroch declared that Trump’s actions amounted to “diplomatic vandalism,” the Daily Mail reported on Saturday, quoting the cable.
The newspaper obtained an earlier set of leaked cables from Darroch blasting Trump as a man who “radiates insecurity” and his administration as “dysfunctional” and “inept.” The leaks resulted in a vicious attack on Darroch by Trump and the envoy’s resignation on Wednesday.
In the latest leaked cables to his government, Darroch said the Trump administration was “set upon an act of diplomatic vandalism, seemingly for ideological and personality reasons — it was Obama’s deal,” the newspaper reported, referring to the Iranian pact.
“Moreover, they can’t articulate any ‘day-after’ strategy; and contacts with State Department this morning suggest no sort of plan for reaching out to partners and allies, whether in Europe or the region,” Darroch wrote, according to the Mail.
Darroch also referred to disagreements within the administration, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo distancing himself from Trump’s decision.
Pompeo, Vice President Mike Pence and National Security Adviser John Bolton were unable to “articulate why the president was determined to withdraw, beyond his campaign promises,” Darroch reportedly wrote.
He said in a second cable that Trump signed a memo to withdraw from the pact “following a typically hyperbolic statement on the nature of the ‘murderous’ Iranian regime,” according to the newspaper.
Darroch wrote the memos in May of last year after a failed trip to the U.S. by then-British foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who attempted to talk Trump into sticking with the nuclear agreement.
The latest bombshell erupted just as reports emerged that investigators had identified a suspect who they believed leaked the cables to the Mail. Both Johnson and Jeremy Hunt — Tory rivals in a bid to become Britain’s next prime minister — criticized a Scotland Yard official for warning journalists that they could face prison for publishing government documents.
Hunt said he would “defend to the hilt the right of the press to publish those leaks if they receive them and judge them to be in the public interest,” The Guardian reported.
Johnson said that prosecuting journalists in such a situation “would amount to an infringement on press freedom.”
There was no immediate word about the new cable revelations from the White House.