In preparing its annual table of major global threats, US intelligence on Tuesday denied Donald Trump major axes of his foreign policy, from North Korea to Iran through the withdrawal from Syria.
The often impulsive diplomacy of the Republican billionaire has already shaken many US allies since arriving at the White House two years ago. Heard by the Senate, the heads of major intelligence agencies brought Tuesday water to the mill of his detractors.
The gap is clear about the negotiations with North Korea, presented by the US president as one of the great diplomatic successes of the first half of his term.
"Our assessments continue to show that North Korea is unlikely to abandon all its nuclear weapons, missiles and production capabilities," intelligence chief Dan Coats wrote in a report to the US Congress.
Despite the suspension of nuclear and ballistic tests "for more than a year" and "the reversible dismantling of certain parts of the infrastructures", "we continue to observe activities that are not compatible with a total denuclearization", he adds.
A light-years-away analysis of the President's self-satisfaction just after his historic summit in Singapore on June 12 with Kim Jong Un. "There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea", had he trumpeted.
This hasty conclusion had already been relativised by his administration, but it continues to assert that the North Korean leader has committed to a "definitive and fully verified denuclearization" of his country.
But Dan Coats notes that in Singapore, the number one Pyongyang spoke black on white that a "complete denuclearization of the Korean peninsula", a formulation including the requirement that the United States put an end to their deployments and military exercises in the region.
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