Trump says U.S. pulling out of ‘decaying’ Iran nuclear deal Trump’s decision is likely to exacerbate tensions between his administration and key European allies

“I am announcing today that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said in a televised address from the White House. “We will be instituting the highest level of economic sanction.”

“The United States no longer makes empty threats,” Trump said. “When I make promises, I keep them.”

Trump did not offer details about the reimposition of sanctions, whose structure is complex. Before he spoke, some reports suggested he might only apply some sanctions but not others, or delay their imposition.

“France, Germany, and the UK regret the U.S. decision to leave the JCPOA. The nuclear non-proliferation regime is at stake,” Macron tweeted. (The nuclear agreement is formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA.)

Supporters of the deal say that Iran has complied with its requirements, and insist it was the only realistic alternative to military force as a means of halting Tehran’s nuclear program. Some Obama officials argued on Monday that it is more accurate to say that Trump had violated the deal, not withdrawn from it.

Trump’s defiant move follows more than a year of internal debate over the Obama-era agreement, which Trump repeatedly denounced as a 2016 candidate, when he blasted it as a “terrible deal.”

Until today, top Trump advisers repeatedly convinced him to take mainly symbolic and rhetorical action. But Trump recently ousted two key supporters of the agreement, former national security adviser H.R. McMaster and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and replaced them with Bolton and Mike Pompeo, respectively. Both have been harsh critics of the agreement. In past debates, Defense Secretary James Mattis also has opposed upending the agreement.

Many supporters of the agreement also suspect that Trump is motivated by a desire to negate a core plank of President Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy.

The 2015 nuclear deal removed a slew of U.S. and international economic sanctions on Iran in exchange for strict limits on the Islamist-led country’s nuclear program, verified by regular inspections and monitoring.

Trump has hinted for months that he wants to fulfill his campaign promise andquit the agreement. Efforts to address Trump’s concerns by Germany, Britain and France — who, along with Russia and China, also negotiated the deal — apparently failed to move the U.S. president.

European officials insist that they will try to salvage the deal, even if the United States abandons its commitments. “We are determined to save this deal because this accord safeguards against nuclear proliferation and is the right way to stop Iran getting a nuclear weapon,” French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told reporters in Berlin on Monday.

Russia and China, meanwhile, issued a joint statement last week declaring “unwavering support for the comprehensive and effective implementation” of the deal and cited “the urgent necessity for all parties” to “rigorously adhere to and fully implement their commitments.”

Senior administration officials, including Vice President Mike Pence, informed congressional leaders earlier Tuesday of the White House’s plan, according to two people briefed on the situation.

Although Trump described the deal as “decaying,” international inspectors and every other nation party to the agreement say that Iran has met its obligations.

Even some Republicans who opposed the deal in 2015, are uneasy about Trump’s desire to scrap it. Ed Royce, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, noted in a statement Tuesday that Iran received many of the benefits of the deal upfront, including the unfreezing of tens of billion dollars in assets.

“Tearing up the nuclear deal will not recover this cash,” said Royce, a Republican from California. “That toothpaste isn’t going back into the tube. It also won’t help galvanize our allies into addressing Iran’s dangerous activities that threaten us all. I fear a withdrawal would actually set back these efforts. And Congress has heard nothing about alternative.”

Iran has said it will not renegotiate the nuclear deal, but it has also signaled that it will try to stay in it if it can work something out with the Europeans, whose business Iran is seeking to improve its economy. (Thanks to a slew of non-nuclear U.S. sanctions that remain in place, most American businesses are still forbidden from engaging Iran.)

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said Tuesday that his nation could “face some problems” in the months ahead but will withstand a U.S. exit engineered by Trump. “It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this,” Rouhani said in Tehran, according to The Associated Press.

Supporters of the deal warn that new sanctions could bring down the entire agreement. That’s because many of the sanctions that Trump would reimpose are so-called secondary sanctions. These sanctions punish entities in other countries, such as European ones, if they do business with Iran.

The mere threat of U.S. sanctions is enough to scare many companies away from doing business with Iran. Seeing no eeconomic benefits from capping their nuclear program, Iranian leaders may decide to restart it.

While international monitors have found Iran to be in compliance with the nuclear deal, Trump has complained that the agreement does not do enough to address other actions by the Iranian government, including its support for terrorist groups and its role in conflicts in Syria and Yemen.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who views Iran as an existential threat to his country, has been among of the deal’s most vociferous critics. In a presentation late last month that appeared aimed solely at Trump, Netanyahu unveiled a trove of material, apparently spirited out of Iran, that he said proved the Islamic Republic was lying about its nuclear program being peaceful.

The deal’s supporters said the material, which appeared focused on what Iran’s program looked like in the early 2000s, contained nothing that wasn’t already known — and that it was actually proof that a nuclear deal was necessary. The deal’s critics countered that it showed that Iran simply can’t be trusted.

Obama administration officials have repeatedly spoken out in favor of the agreement. Former Secretary of State John Kerry has met with European and Iranian officials, including Iran’s foreign minister, to discuss what can be done to prevent its collapse.

For the second day in a row Tuesday, Trump blasted Kerry for his behind-the-scenes actions. “John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it!” the president tweeted. “Stay away from negotiations John, you are hurting your country!”

Some conservatives have questioned whether Kerry’s shadow diplomacy could have broken a federal law that prohibits unauthorized persons from negotiating with foreign countries on behalf of the United States.

But Kerry has denied doing anything wrong, saying in an appearance Tuesday: “I’m not negotiating with anybody. I have conversations … I think it’s perfectly legitimate.”

Burgess Everett, Helena Bottemiller Evich and Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.

Source:politico.com