Trump Withdraws U.S. From Iran Nuclear Deal That Inspectors Repeatedly Certified Was Working, Resolving Long-Standing Concern That Iran's Path To A Bomb Was Still Blocked

The Filing

WASHINGTON. President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that the United States would abandon the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the multinational agreement limiting Iran's nuclear program, resolving a long-standing concern within the administration that the country's path to a weapon was being successfully obstructed.

The agreement, signed by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, China, and the European Union, had capped Iran's uranium enrichment, reduced its stockpile of nuclear material, and opened its facilities to continuous international inspection in exchange for relief from economic sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency had certified Iran's compliance with the terms on roughly a dozen separate occasions, a consistency that administration officials identified as among the deal's most troubling features.

"The Iran deal is defective at its core," the President said from the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House, describing the accord as "horrible" and "one-sided" and a deal that "should have never, ever been made." He added that the agreement "didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace, and it never will," leaving observers to determine whether the objection was that the deal had failed or that it had been negotiated by his predecessor.

With his signature, the President reinstated the full slate of sanctions the agreement had suspended, a step that placed the United States in violation of an accord the other six signatories continued to honor. Officials in London, Paris, and Berlin announced that they would attempt to preserve the deal without American participation, an effort one source within the administration described as "their problem now." The decision left the United States isolated from its closest allies and aligned, on the question of the agreement's future, with no one.

In the months that followed, Iran gradually resumed the enrichment activity the agreement had halted, expanding its stockpile of nuclear material well beyond the limits inspectors had once been able to verify. Administration officials, asked whether the withdrawal had delivered the calm and peace the President said the deal never could, did not respond.

At press time, the President was reviewing a list of additional functioning agreements that had been entered into before he took office.

Who Benefits

§Donald J. Trump, who fulfilled a marquee campaign pledge by dismantling a signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama administration, a goal he had at times described in personal terms as removing an embarrassment.
§John Bolton, the incoming national security adviser, who had argued against the agreement for years and watched the policy he favored adopted within weeks of his arrival at the White House.
§Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, who had lobbied publicly and at length for the United States to abandon the deal and praised the decision the same day it was announced.
§The government of Saudi Arabia, Iran's principal regional rival, which welcomed the renewed isolation of Tehran and the reimposition of pressure on its economy.
§Iranian hardliners, who had insisted for years that the United States could not be trusted to keep its commitments and were handed a public demonstration of exactly that, at the expense of the agreement's supporters inside Iran.
§Oil producers, who benefited as the reimposition of sanctions on Iranian crude tightened global supply and lifted prices.
§Defense contractors, positioned to supply a Middle East entering a prolonged period of heightened tension and renewed arms demand.

Sourced to the public record · presented without editorial embellishment