In SF, John Kerry drums up the ‘fight’ for Paris Agreement, Iran deal

Former Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione, speaks before the Ploughshares Fund Chain Reaction Gala at Fort Mason in San Francisco, Calif., Monday, June 5, 2017. (Michael Macor/San Francisco Chronicle via AP) less Former Secretary of State John Kerry, left, with Ploughshares President Joe Cirincione, speaks before the Ploughshares Fund Chain Reaction Gala at Fort Mason in San Francisco, Calif., Monday, June 5, 2017. ... more Photo: Michael Macor, Associated Press Photo: Michael Macor, Associated Press Image 1 of / 15 Caption Close In SF, John Kerry drums up the ‘fight’ for Paris Agreement, Iran deal 1 / 15 Back to Gallery

Four days after one of his signature policy achievements fell when President Trump declared the United States would withdraw from the Paris climate agreement, former Secretary of State John Kerry in San Francisco on Monday defended a second landmark of his legacy, the Iran nuclear deal.

Kerry, speaking at the nuclear non-proliferation and nonprofit Ploughshares Fund’s annual gala in Fort Mason, issued a call for the Trump administration to renew its role as a diplomatic leader. The former secretary warned of “troubling” times for democracy and said the Paris exit established a precarious precedent.

Of his own endeavors since leaving the White House in January, Kerry was vague — saying that he is working with several Bay Area organizations, which he did not name, on climate change and nuclear issues.

He also said he planned in two to three weeks to visit Vietnam to try to dissuade government officials from building a series of coal-burning power plants.

On Iran, he dinged President Trump and “hard-liners” in Congress who have long called for a tougher deal.

Congressional Republican leadership, who opposed the deal from the start, including House Speaker Paul Ryan, have said they support new sanctions for Iran even if the deal stays in place. Republicans argue that the Obama administration’s negotiations were far too lenient and risked allowing Iran, designated as a state sponsor of terrorism, to obtain a nuclear weapon.

Though Trump promised in his presidential campaign to tear up the Iran deal, the White House signaled in mid-May that it would at least temporarily keep the agreement in place.

“It doesn’t make sense, folks, to risk a step that gets us nothing,” Kerry said of calls to impose stricter sanctions on Iran.

The longtime politician said he was encouraged by Trump’s appointments of James Mattis as secretary of defense and H.R. McMaster as national security adviser. The two, Kerry said, are “good people,” who ought to serve as the “adults in the room.”

He described U.S. oversight of Iran’s nuclear production as a “system that’s working,” saying the country’s 19,000 centrifuges had been reduced about two-thirds under the agreement, as well as other measures of progress.

Trump’s recent refusal to explicitly back NATO’s Article 5, which mandates the joint defense of a member nation under attack, also troubled Kerry, he said. He alluded to that, as well as growing right-wing populist movements in the European Union, as signs of global stability stumbling.

Still, Kerry said the “two big threats” inside the United States were the Citizens United court case that stopped campaign spending limits for corporations and the process of gerrymandering.

Asked in a question-and-answer session about his 2014 remarks on climate change as a “weapon of mass destruction” that rivaled terrorism as a threat to the world, he said the evidence supporting the supposition has since become more clear.

“All you have to do is see the torrent of water pouring off the Greenland rock, or the Antarctic ice sheet destabilized,” he said. “Scientists, people whose life is invested in this are telling you, ‘This is growing in instability, and the threat is that whole parts of the ice sheet will break off.’”

Though he at times depicted the world as a “dark” place facing a growing number of complex, multinational issues, Kerry said that on the whole he remained optimistic — and certainly so when it comes to climate.

He said the more than 200 so-called “Climate Mayors” from major U.S. cities who have vowed to stick to Paris standards — including San Francisco’s Mayor Ed Lee — were a good sign, as were dozens of states passing voluntary clean-energy laws.

“We’re going to exceed Paris, easily” even without the backing of the federal government, he said.

And, drawing a knowing laugh from the crowd of Ploughshares donors, Kerry said the president’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement does not take effect until the day after the 2020 election.

Michael Bodley is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mbodley@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @michael_bodley