US will regret if it quits

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani yesterday said that if the United States quits the nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers then Washington would regret it "like never before".

US President Donald Trump has threatened to abandon the agreement when it comes up for renewal on May 12, demanding his country's European allies "fix the terrible flaws" or he will re-impose sanctions.

"If the United States leaves the nuclear agreement, you will soon see that they will regret it like never before in history," Rouhani said in a televised speech in northwestern Iran.

"Trump must know that our people are united, the Zionist regime (Israel) must know that our people are united," Rouhani added.

The nuclear deal was struck in 2015 between Iran and UK, China, France, Germany, Russia and the US, then led by Barack Obama.

Under the pact, sanctions were lifted in return for a commitment not to pursue a nuclear bomb, but Iran says it is not reaping the rewards despite complying with the deal.

Rouhani did not specify how Iran would react if the US pulls out of the deal. But he said he had given "the necessary orders", notably to Iran's Atomic Energy Organisation, in anticipation of Trump's decision.

In another development, according to the British news outlet The Observer, aides to the US President Donald Trump hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to organize a “dirty ops” campaign against key people from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal.

As part of an effort to discredit the deal, the Trump administration officials contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama's top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, the new outlet revealed.

A foreign secretary involved in earlier efforts to restrict Iranian weapons, Jack Straw, was quoted saying that these were “extraordinary and appalling allegations” but they also reflect a “high level of desperation” by Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu – “not so much to discredit the deal but to undermine those around it.”

According to The Guardian, sources said that officials linked to Trump's team contacted investigators days after Trump visited Tel Aviv a year ago, his first foreign tour as US president. Trump reportedly promised Netanyahu that “Iran would never have nuclear weapons.”

According to the documents seen by The Observer, investigators contracted by the private intelligence agency were told to dig into the personal lives and political careers of Rhodes and Kahl to find if they had “benefited personally or politically” from the peace deal.

Although sources have confirmed that contact and an initial plan of attack was provided to private investigators by representatives of Trump, it is not clear how much work was actually undertaken, for how long or what became of any material unearthed, added The Guardian.