Iran nuclear deal: Trump withdraws the US from the agreement

President Trump announced Tuesday that he would withdraw the US from the Iran nuclear deal, and said he would begin reinstating high-level sanctions on the Iranian regime.

“This is a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” the president said during a speech at the White House.

The nuclear agreement between Iran and the United States, Britain, France, Russia, China, and Germany, as well as the European Union, put tight restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the relaxation of some punishing international sanctions on Iran. It was the Obama administration’s biggest foreign policy achievement.

Trump and other critics of the deal have argued that Iran can’t be trusted and that the agreement did not effectively end Iran’s nuclear program. But the deal’s many supporters, which include all of Washington’s closest European allies, say Iran has kept up its part of the deal and that pulling out of it would do more harm than good.

But Trump declared on Tuesday afternoon that the deal was “defective at its core.” After officially announcing the withdrawal, Trump said that the US would impose heavy sanctions on Iran and that they would work with allies to counter the Iranian threat.

Now it remains to be seen how Iran — and key US allies that have participated in the agreement — will react.