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Trump Is Facing These Two Major Nuclear Decisions Right Now

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Decision #1: Kill the Iran Deal, or Keep It?

President Trump is facing a new wave of pressure this week to stick with the Iran nuclear deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel will visit the White House, urging the president to keep the 2015 agreement which allegedly curbs Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Trump has vowed to pull away from the deal by May 12th unless US and European negotiators can repair what he calls serious flaws.

On Sunday, Macron acknowledged on "Fox News Sunday" that the deal is not perfect but asked, "What do you have as a better option? I don't see it."

Macron is meeting with Trump at the White House on Tuesday and Merkel later in the week.  

Iran is also warning that it will ramp up its nuclear program if the US backs out of the agreement.  

Mohammad Javad Zarif  said on CBS's "Face the Nation" on Sunday, "We have put a number of options for ourselves and those options are ready, including options that would involve resuming, at a much greater speed, our nuclear activities."

Decision #2: Trump Has This Leverage on North Korea

At the same time, the president and others are dealing with another international nuclear issue as they prepare for a summit in May or early June with North Korea's Kim Jong Un.  

The Trump administration is tamping down expectations for that meeting. On Sunday the president tweeted: "maybe things will work out and maybe they won't."

But the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee stated that de-nuclearization is unrealistic. Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) believes Kim Jong Un has no motivation to give up his nuclear ambitions.

He told "ABC This Week," "He views that having deliverable nuclear weapons as his ticket to dying as an old man in his bed. He saw what happened with Gadhafi. Gadhafi's a dead man now because he gave up his nuclear weapons. So, to think that somebody's going to go in and charm him out of that is not realistic."

Corker added that he thinks some progress could be made, such as freezing North Korea's program.

The president does have some leverage. A senior administration official told the Wall Street Journal the US will not substantially lift sanctions against North Korea unless it significantly dismantles its nuclear programs.

Over the weekend, Kim Jong Un said he's closing North Korea's nuclear test site and suspending long-range missile tests, two promising signs ahead of his summit with Trump.

The president will soon have to make his final decisions on how to negotiate both with North Korea and on the Iranian deal.

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About The Author

Heather
Sells

Heather Sells covers wide-ranging stories for CBN News that include religious liberty, ministry trends, immigration, and education. She’s known for telling personal stories that capture the issues of the day, from the border sheriff who rescues migrants in the desert to the parents struggling with a child that identifies as transgender. In the last year, she has reported on immigration at the Texas border, from Washington, D.C., in advance of the Dobbs abortion case, at crisis pregnancy centers in Massachusetts, and on sexual abuse reform at the annual Southern Baptist meeting in Anaheim