In an exclusive interview with
The Daily Caller, Donald Trump adviser Dr. Walid Phares said the Republican nominee won't "get rid of" the Iran deal despite saying three months ago that dismantling it was his "number one priority."
"No, he's not going to get rid of an agreement that has the institutional signature of the United States. He is a man of institutions," Phares, Trump's foreign policy adviser, told the Caller. "He's said so far that he doesn't like this deal and that it was poorly negotiated … So he is not going to implement it as is, he is going to revise it after negotiating one on one with Iran or with a series of allies."
However, that's in direct contrast with what Trump said at
AIPAC back in March, when he told the audience that the deal was "catastrophic for Israel, for America, for the whole of the Middle East."
"My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran," Trump said at the Washington, D.C. AIPAC conference.
Quoting Trump from the AIPAC conference, however, Phares did assure that U.S.-Israel relations under a President Trump would remain solid as ever.
"Mr. Trump has made it clear to both the Republican Jewish Coalition (RJC), and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that he will be a strong ally of Israel, as he has always been," Phares told the Caller.
Phares, who also advised Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in 2012, told the Caller that under Trump's foreign policy team, "the top two priorities are how to deal with issues of nuclear proliferation and how to completely destroy Islamic jihadist organizations, including and especially ISIS."
On that front, Trump has said in the past that the U.S. should not prevent allies South Korea or Japan from obtaining nuclear weapons, but Phares tempered those
April comments.
"To be clear though, Mr. Trump is not committed to any particular action," Phares told the Caller. "He will not ask Japan or South Korea to invest in building nuclear weapons but he will speak with their leaders about how to create a safer and more stable environment in the East Asia theater."
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