President Trump was enthusiastic Monday about British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s idea of forging a new nuclear deal with Iran, saying that he respected Johnson and was not surprised he had floated the idea.

“That’s why he’s a winner and that’s why he’s going to be successful in the UK. I respect Boris a lot and I’m not surprised he was the first to come out and see that,” Trump said.

Johnson, he added, was “a man who, Number 1, he’s a friend of mine, and Number 2, he’s very smart, very tough.”

Johnson said earlier that it was time to negotiate a new nuclear deal with Iran, breaking ranks with European allies France and Germany, which are still trying to preserve the 2015 agreement from which Trump withdrew the United States last year.

“Whatever your objections to the old nuclear deal with Iran, it’s time now to move forward and do a new deal,” Johnson told Sky News in Manhattan, where he’s attending the opening session of the UN General Assembly.

Later, he told NBC News that if anyone could cut a better deal with Iran, it’s Trump.

“I think there’s one guy who can do a better deal . . . and that is the president of the United States. I hope there will be a Trump deal,” Johnson said.

Johnson also backed the assessment that Iran was behind the Sept. 14 attacks on Saudi Arabia’s oil facilities.

“We have no other workable hypothesis about how that happened,” he said.

“That presents the world with a very difficult scenario, very difficult position. How do we respond?”

After Trump pulled the US out of the nuclear deal with Iran, the other nations that signed it, including the UK, France, Germany, Russia and China, vowed to remain in the pact.

Trump wants a tougher deal that would bar Iran permanently from developing nuclear weapons while also curbing its ballistic missile program and backing for Hezbollah, which the US calls a terrorist group.

“One of the big mistakes was that the agreement was going to expire in a short number of years,” Trump said. “What kind of a deal is that?”