Trump says U.S. pulling out of ‘rotten’ nuclear deal The move targets a legacy achievement of Barack Obama, who warned of possible war.

President Donald Trump said Tuesday he will impose “the highest level” of economic sanctions on Iran, dealing a potentially fatal blow to the Iran nuclear deal and once again spurning mainstream foreign policy opinion.

Trump insisted that what he called a "decaying and rotten" deal is deeply flawed because it does not permanently cap Iran's nuclear program or address topics such as Tehran’s ballistic missile program and support of terrorist groups.


“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."

As critics warned that Trump was creating a crisis — and even risking a military conflict — the president cast his decision as an act of strength. "The United States no longer makes empty threats," Trump said. "When I make promises, I keep them."

Before Trump spoke, some reports suggested that he might re-apply some sanctions but not others, or delay their imposition. But in a conference call with reporters after Trump's speech, national security adviser John Bolton, himself a fierce critic of Iran, suggested that the president was taking a maximalist path, reimposing all relevant sanctions effective immediately.

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"We're out of the deal," Bolton said, three times in a row.

The move makes good on Trump’s insistence that the deal was too generous, allowing Iran to keep a mostly dormant nuclear program that Trump said could quickly produce a nuclear bomb once the deal’s provisions expire in the middle of the next decade.

But it further strains relations with key European allies, who have spent months urging Trump to sustain the agreement. It also came over the opposition of China and Russia, which were also parties to the 2015 deal.

And it drew an unusual public rebuke from former President Barack Obama himself, who invoked the specter of military conflict.

"Without the [Iran deal], the United States could eventually be left with a losing choice between a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East," Obama said in a lengthy statement.

Many former Obama administration officials suspect that Trump’s decision was, in part personal — that he was motivated by a desire to gut Obama's foreign policy legacy. Obama aides, including former Secretary of State John Kerry, spent years pushing sanctions and hundreds of hours painstakingly negotiating the deal over some 18 months, and Trump’s decision left some of them dejected.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, meanwhile, said he had ordered his foreign minister to begin negotiating with other countries to salvage the deal, according to The Associated Press. He added that if those talks fail, Iran will once against enrich uranium “more than before … in the next weeks.”

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — a vociferous critic of the deal who calls Iran an existential threat to his country — praised Trump's "bold decision."

“Israel has opposed the nuclear deal from the start, because we said that rather than blocking Iran's path to a bomb, the deal actually paves Iran's path to an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs, and this within a few years' time," Netanyahu said in televised remarks.

The 2015 nuclear deal lifted numerous U.S. and international nuclear sanctions on Iran in exchange for severe curbs on and regular inspections of its nuclear program. International monitors have repeatedly declared that Iran is complying with the terms of the deal.

Bolton, who in recent years has proposed taking military action to destroy Iran's nuclear program, dismissed a question citing speculation that Trump might be moving toward an invasion of the country.

“They would be badly mistaken if that’s what they think,” Bolton told reporters.

The sanctions that Trump is reimposing are largely what are known as "secondary sanctions." That means they penalize foreign companies, including European ones, that do business with Iran. (Thanks to U.S. sanctions unrelated to Iran’s nuclear program, most American businesses are still barred from commerce with Iran.)

In a joint statement, the leaders of France, Germany and Britain said they remain committed to preserving the deal.

The statement urged the U.S. “to ensure that the structures of the [deal] can remain intact, and to avoid taking action which obstructs its full implementation by all other parties to the deal.”

The three leaders — British Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron — also urged Iran to "show restraint in response to the decision by the U.S."

The European leaders did not say whether their nations would contest the U.S. reimposition of secondary sanctions, possibly in an international court. U.S. officials said Tuesday that companies that currently are doing business with Iran would have a grace period to pull out — from 90 days to 180 days, depending on the sector and other factors.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters that Boeing and Airbus, companies that have sought access to the Iranian airline business, would see any licenses they had be revoked. He raised the possibility that some companies may be allowed to get waivers from the sanctions.

Trump and Bolton indicated that the administration was open to new talks on a broader agreement that addresses Iran's nuclear program along with its ballistic missile program. Bolton said he would be talking to his European counterparts Wednesday.

But for months, Germany, Britain and France tried to come up with ways to address Trump's concerns about the deal, to no avail.

In reimposing the sanctions, Trump is also fulfilling a promise he made during his 2016 presidential campaign, when he pledged to dismantle what he called a "terrible deal."

Until Tuesday, top Trump administration officials had persuaded him to take mainly symbolic and rhetorical action against the deal. 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 deal. In past debates, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis also has opposed upending the agreement.

Trump’s remarks cited a presentation Netanyahu gave last week that appeared aimed at Trump, in which Netanyahu unveiled a trove of secret material spirited out of Iran that he said revealed a secret effort by the Islamic Republic to develop a nuclear bomb in the mid 2000s. Iran has insisted it developed a nuclear program for peaceful purposes only.

The deal's supporters said Iran’s secret bomb program was previously known, and that the new details only strengthened the case for a nuclear deal. Critics countered that it showed that Iran simply can't be trusted and that the deal had been based on a lie.

House Speaker Paul Ryan was among Republicans who supported Trump's move, saying, "from the beginning, the Obama-era Iran deal was deeply flawed."

Other Republicans, even some who opposed the deal in 2015, are uneasy about Trump's desire to scrap it. Ed Royce, 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 billions of 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 an alternative."

Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was among numerous Democrats to blast Trump’s speech. The “dangerous decision,” he tweeted, is “risking U.S. national security, recklessly upending foundational partnerships with key European allies & gambling with Israel’s security.”

“Today’s withdrawal makes it more likely Iran will restart its nuclear weapons program in the future,” wrote Menendez, who originally opposed the deal but now says it's important the U.S. stay in it and enforce it.

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

Earlier Tuesday, for the second day in a row, 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, Victoria Guida and Cristiano Lima contributed to this report.