BRUSSELS: The European Union has informally contacted the incoming Trump administration to clarify “misunderstanding” about the Iran nuclear deal which he has threatened to scrap, an EU diplomatic source said Tuesday.

EU foreign affairs head Federica Mogherini on Monday insisted the bloc would stand by the accord — which she helped negotiate.

US President-elect Donald Trump has blasted the agreement as “one of the dumbest deals I have ever seen.”

The EU diplomatic source said the contacts were made to explain the value of the accord.

“Some informal outreach was done to the new US administration to explain the added value of the deal,” the source said.

“There has been a lot of misunderstanding out there ... It is a multilateral agreement; if one side steps away from it, the others can do the same.”

The source said the EU was determined to stick with the accord and was “working very much hand in hand with China and Russia on this.”

“We see this deal as very important, as having averted a potential major crisis in a region running high with tensions,” the source added.

In a separate development, President Vladimir Putin cracked raunchy jokes as he poked fun at claims that Russian secret services filmed Trump with prostitutes.

Showing he is familiar with the claims in the explosive dossier, Putin launched into a series of ribald jokes about prostitutes, riffing on Trump’s former role as owner of the Miss Universe beauty contest.

The unsubstantiated dossier published by American media last week alleged that Russia had gathered compromising information on Trump, namely videos involving prostitutes at a luxury Moscow hotel, supposedly as a potential means for blackmail.

Putin also questioned why Trump would feel the need to hire prostitutes, given his opportunities to meet beautiful women at the Miss Universe contest.

In his first public comments on the claims, Putin rubbished the idea that Russian secret services would have spied on Trump during his 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe final, as alleged in the dossier.

“Trump when he came to Moscow... wasn’t any kind of political figure, we didn’t even know of his political ambitions,” Putin said, responding to a journalist’s question at a news conference.

“Does anyone think that our special services chase every American billionaire? Of course not, it’s just completely ridiculous.”

“He’s a grown-up for a start and secondly a man who spent his whole life organizing beauty contests and meeting the most beautiful women in the world,” Putin said.

“I can hardly imagine that he ran off to a hotel to meet our girls of ‘lowered social responsibility’,” said Putin, adding jokingly “although they are of course the best in the world.

“I doubt Trump fell for that.”

Putin went on to compare those behind the dossier unfavorably with prostitutes.

“The people who order falsifications of the kind that are now circulating against the US president-elect — they are worse than prostitutes, they don’t have any moral limits at all.

“The fact that such methods are being used against the US president-elect is a unique case: nothing like this has happened before.

“This shows a significant level of degradation of the political elite in the West.”

Under the accord, Tehran agreed to rein in its nuclear program in return for an easing of punishing Western economic sanctions.

US President Barack Obama hailed the accord as one of his major achievements, preventing Iran getting nuclear weapons without having to go to war.