Britain’s Top Diplomat: Iran Nuclear Deal Can be Saved 

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div>British Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Monday that the international deal on Iran’s nuclear program “isn’t dead yet,” and that while the opportunity to find a resolution to the current crisis surrounding the agreement is closing, it is still possible to keep it alive.

He spoke ahead of talks with other European Union foreign ministers in Brussels where they planned to discuss the Iran situation.

The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was agreed to by Iran and a group of world powers that included Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States to allay concerns Iran was working to develop a nuclear weapon.

Iran has long said its nuclear program was solely for peaceful purposes, and it won badly needed relief from sanctions in return for limiting its nuclear activity far below what would be needed to make a weapon.

Hunt said Monday that Iran was more than a year away from having the capability to build a nuclear device.

Boris Johnson, a Conservative favorite to succeed Theresa May when she steps down as prime minister later this month, seemed to dismiss the importance of the leaked cables.

He described them as “embarrassing but it is not a threat to national security.”

“It is the duty of media organizations to bring new and interesting facts into the public domain,” said Johnson, himself a journalist and former editor.

In May 2018, Johnson, then Britain’s foreign minister, went to Washington to try to persuade Trump to not abandon the Iran pact.