The United States has no plans to bomb Iran after pulling out of the nuclear deal, UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson has said.
Johnson, who has just returned from a trip to Washington, DC, said he was confident there was "no enthusiasm" from Donald Trump's team for military action.
He was addressing MPs on Wednesday, hours after the president announced he would be withdrawing the US from the nuclear deal and reinstating sanctions against Iran.
The UK, France, and Germany have strongly condemned the move. Known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal was forged in a landmark bid to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.
Johnson said: "I have to tell you after closely interrogating everybody I could find in the White House, there is no enthusiasm for a military option in the United States and there is no such plan.
"So I think what we want to hear now is a successor plan."
However, he failed to mention the views of John Bolton, Trump's new national security adviser, who has advocated bombing Iran.
In a 2015 op-ed in the New York Times headlined “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” Bolton wrote that “the inconvenient truth” is that only military action will accomplish US objectives in Iran.
“Time is terribly short, but a strike can still succeed,” he said. “The inescapable conclusion is that Iran will not negotiate away its nuclear program. Nor will sanctions block its building a broad and deep weapons infrastructure.”
Johnson was replying to Tory MP Philip Hollobone, who warned that tougher action was needed against Iran. “Appeasement didn't work in the 1930s and it's not going to work now,” Hollobone warned.
The foreign secretary said: “I'm absolutely at one with my honourable friend in his desire to get tough on Iran. The question is whether you can achieve that by getting rid of the JCPOA. What are your subsequent plans? What are your options for being tough on Iran in the way that he wants?”
And Hollobone wasn't the only one who had sympathy with Trump's decision.
Former defence secretary Michael Fallon said the president was “right in his analysis of this rather flimsy agreement” that it “should never have been called comprehensive and it does not include missiles”.
“Far from constraining Iranian behaviour, it has enabled the Iranian regime to use its new financial freedom to interfere in Syria, in Iraq, above all in Yemen, and to sponsor Houthi attacks on our friends in Saudi Arabia,” he said.
Johnson replied: “I don't recall him making those points when he served so well as secretary of state for defence when the deal was done.
“But I disagree with him because I think that the advantage of the JCPOA – of course it has limitations, as I readily conceded – is, at the heart of it, is this idea to stop the Iranians from acquiring a nuclear weapon in exchange for limited economic benefits.”
Another Tory former minister, Robert Halfon, said: “I can't say that President Trump is my cup of tea but the Iranian actions in the Middle East go down like a cup of cold sick.
“They support terrorism, Hamas, and Hezbollah, they suppress their own people at home, and they are supporters of President Assad.
“I think rather than appeasing Iran we should be supporting our oldest ally, the United States, and actually recognising they've made this decision because the Iranians are backing down on the agreement and are continuing with ballistic missiles.”