President Trump announced Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” Trump said at the White House in announcing his decision. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”
The agreement—signed in 2015 by the U.S., Iran, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China—was designed to halt Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting economic sanctions that had crippled Iran’s economy. Among other things, the deal required Iran to ship most of its nuclear materials out of the country and allow international inspectors to regularly monitor all aspects of its nuclear program.
Trump’s decision to leave the agreement unravels the signature foreign policy achievement of his predecessor, President Barack Obama. It also fulfills Trump’s campaign pledge to dismantle the pact, which he has called the “worst deal ever.”
U.S. allies reacted to the announcement with dismay.
“France, Germany, and the United Kingdom regret the U.S. decision to get out of the Iranian nuclear deal,” President Emmanuel Macron of France said in a post on Twitter shortly after Trump’s announcement. “The international regime against nuclear proliferation is at stake.”
Obama and other supporters of the agreement have long said that it’s our best hope for preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons. But critics, including President Trump, say the deal isn’t tough enough and that Iran’s leaders can’t be trusted to keep up their end of the bargain. (International inspectors, however, have found no evidence of major violations.)
The United States is now preparing to reinstate all sanctions on Iran that it had waived as part of the nuclear accord—and impose additional economic penalties as well.