Donald Trump pulls the United States out of the nuclear deal with Iran, renews sanctions

David Jackson | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption President Trump pulls U.S. out of Iran nuclear deal President Donald Trump says Iran has not lived up to its part of the deal, and "America will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail."

WASHINGTON — President Trump said Tuesday that the United States will withdraw from the landmark Iran nuclear agreement and re-impose sanctions on Tehran, a decision that angered allies who fear the prospect of a nuclear arms race in the heart of the Middle East.

Declaring that "the decaying and the rotten structure" of the 2015 agreement does not block Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Trump said during a speech at the White House that "the Iran deal is defective at its core."

The decision drew criticism from Trump predecessor Barack Obama, who argued in a Facebook post that the deal is working and withdrawing from it is a serious mistake.

"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.

While European leaders said they would try to maintain the agreement with or without the United States, Iran's president said there is only a "short time" for renegotiations — otherwise his country could speed the process of enriching uranium, a component of weapons making.

“I have ordered Iran’s atomic organization that whenever it is needed, we will start enriching uranium more than before," Iran President Hassan Rouhani said on state television, adding that could start "in the next weeks."

Back in Washington, Trump also announced that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is again traveling to North Korea to meet with Kim Jong Un to set up a meeting with Trump about Kim's nuclear programs.

Abrogating the Iran nuclear deal should not affect the prospects of a new agreement with North Korea to ends its weapons programs, Trump said, though some analysts questioned that declaration. "We'll see how it all works out," Trump said. "Maybe it will, maybe it won't."

French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May — all of whom urged Trump to stay in the Iran agreement — issued a joint statement expressing "regret and concern" over the decision.

Hoping to maintain a truncated agreement, the European leaders asked Iran to "show restraint." They also asked Trump and the United States "to avoid taking action which obstructs its full implementation by all other parties to the deal."

Democratic lawmakers and other supporters of the Iran agreement said Trump's decision would undermine U.S. and global security.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said pulling out of the agreement "will only succeed in driving a wedge between us and our allies" and "will effectively green-light Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons." Warner and others said Iran has been complying with the agreement by eliminating technology needed to make such weapons.

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., likened the withdrawal to "a soccer player deliberately kicking the ball into their own team’s goal."

Before his speech, Trump and aides spoke by phone with congressional and foreign leaders about the agreement, including Macron and Chinese President Xi Jinping.

In the run-up to Trump's announcement, a string of European leaders, lawmakers, and arms control officials had implored Trump to stay within the agreement.

Cites Israeli evidence

In justifying his decision, Trump bashed Iran for what he called support of terrorism and threats toward Israel. He also noted that he pledged to end the agreement during his presidential campaign, and "when I make promises, I keep them."

Trump also cited claims by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that Iran has cheated on development of nuclear weapons, though Netanyahu drew from documents created before the agreement took effect.

More: Analysis: What does Trump's Iran move mean for a potential agreement with North Korea?

David Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, called Trump's move "a blunder" that "undercuts our standing and credibility, alienates our allies, empowers our enemies and will make the Middle East more dangerous."

Noting that Trump wants some sort of nuclear deal with North Korea but is killing an exist pact with Iran, Rothkopf said Trump's main motive appears to be reversing Obama's policies. He said Trump "has made U.S. foreign policy all about him and as a consequence he has put all the rest of us and America's leadership role in the world at risk."

Republicans back move

Others, including top Trump aides and congressional Republicans, applauded the president's decision. They said sanctions relief has provided Iran the money necessary to build up a ballistic missile program and to finance fighters in rival countries.

"From the beginning, the Obama-era Iran deal was deeply flawed," said House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., adding that the world needs to address "a range of destabilizing Iranian behavior — both nuclear and non-nuclear."

More: U.S. withdraws from Iran nuclear deal, a set-up for Trump's ultimate goal

Ryan said he would have preferred to "fix the deficiencies in the agreement," and "it is unfortunate that we could not reach an understanding with our European partners on a way to do that."

John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it! Stay away from negotiations John, you are hurting your country! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 8, 2018

Trump repeatedly denounced the Obama administration in his remarks on the agreement, at one point calling it "a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made."

In previous months, Trump has refused to recertify the agreement but has held off on the key move of reimposing economic sanctions.

Trump had said he wanted to give international partners and lawmakers a chance to improve the deal, in which the U.S. and allies pulled back sanctions as Iran gave up the mechanical means to make nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, he said those efforts had fallen short.

Under the complex agreement, the United States has granted waivers to a variety of sanctions on the regime.

Trump faced a Saturday deadline on a waiver for sanctions on Iran's central bank, a key part of Tehran's lucrative oil market. There is also a July deadline for a waiver on sanctions targeting Iranian businesses and individuals.

More: Who wins and who loses in Trump's decision to pull the United States from the Iran deal?

Though Trump did not specify the timeline for reimposition of sanctions, aides said there would be a wind-down period of up to 180 days. That time, however, would not be used to renegotiate the agreement, they said.

"We're out of the deal," national security adviser John Bolton said.

Kelsey Davenport, director of non-proliferation policy with the Arms Control Association, said Trump is killing an agreement "that is verifiably blocking Iran’s pathways to nuclear weapons." Urging U.S. partners to somehow sustain the agreement, Davenport said breaching it "risks manufacturing a nuclear crisis that the international community cannot afford."

In earlier reviews of the Iran agreement, Trump's foreign policy team included officials who basically supported staying in the agreement but seeking improvements to it.

That group included Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster, but they have left the administration.

Their replacements, Pompeo and Bolton, have been much more critical of the agreement, one reason many analyst believed Trump would take steps to void it.

Hours before the announcement, Trump took to Twitter to taunt one of the architects of the deal, former secretary of State John Kerry, for his campaign to preserve it.

"John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it!" Trump tweeted. "Stay away from negotiations John, you are hurting your country!"

After Trump's speech, Kerry tweeted a denunciation of Trumps's decision.

The withdrawal "weakens our security, breaks America's word, isolates us from our European allies, puts Israel at greater risk, empowers Iran's hardliners, and reduces our global leverage to address Tehran's misbehavior."

Contributing: Eliza Collins