Iran nuclear deal: Trump withdraws the US from the agreement

President Joe Biden’s team has made clear in its earliest hours that a swift return to the Iran nuclear deal is unlikely — potentially prolonging a foreign policy crisis many in Washington had hoped to resolve quickly.

The Trump administration abandoned the agreement in 2018 and reimposed strict economic sanctions on Iran, further decimating the nation’s already struggling economy and complicating the Islamic Republic’s ability to fight the coronavirus. In defiance, Tehran purposefully surpassed caps on its nuclear development established under the deal as a pressure tactic to scare the US back into the accord. The regime’s message, in effect, was the US could either reengage diplomatically or witness Iran’s push toward a nuclear weapon.

Iran may be getting close to having enough nuclear material to make a single bomb if it chooses to do so. Although experts estimate it would still take Iran roughly a year to actually build a bomb (which it has long said it does not want to do), it’s still a worrying development.

It’s also a predictable one — in fact, it’s what many experts warned was likely to happen if President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Last week, Iran attacked two US military sites in Iraq. Now, a week later, one thing has become unmistakably clear: The US and Iran only barely avoided a potentially devastating war.

Defense One reported on Thursday night that 11 US troops sustained injuries in the strikes, which followed report after report after report that some Americans were blown out of towers and received concussions when the missiles hit.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani just said his country is now enriching uranium at a higher level than before the nuclear deal restricted that activity — an assertion that is likely to anger both the Trump administration and the administration’s critics.

That’s because highly enriched uranium can be used to make a nuclear bomb.

As the world waited to see how President Donald Trump would respond to the Iranian missile strikes on al-Asad airbase in Iraq, one of his favorite television hosts cheered on potential reprisals, including retaliation aimed at creating “major poverty” for Iranians.

“There is a massive price to pay. You don’t get to do what they did tonight. They’re going to get hit hard,” Fox News host Sean Hannity said Tuesday night. “The mullahs of Iran, well, they may want to watch and keep a watchful eye on the sky tonight.”

Whenever President Donald Trump does something insane in the realm of foreign policy, which is to say whenever he does anything at all in that realm, his defenders attempt to construct some rational explanation.

Sometimes, this is funny — like when the Wall Street Journal reported that Trump wanted to buy Greenland and his supporters had to pretend that attempting to buy the autonomous territory from Denmark was some stroke of genius.

A deadly opening attack. Nearly untraceable, ruthless proxies spreading chaos on multiple continents. Costly miscalculations. And thousands — perhaps hundreds of thousands — killed in a conflict that would dwarf the war in Iraq.

Welcome to the US-Iran war, which has the potential to be one of the worst conflicts in history.

The way the wind whipped on the other end of the line, the State Department’s special representative for Iran knew the man he’d called was at sea.

“This is Brian Hook,” the American official said, his voice stern and direct. The connection wasn’t great, and the swirling gusts made it hard for the Mediterranean shipping executive on the other end to hear him clearly.

The Trump administration will send nearly 2,000 troops and advanced military equipment to Saudi Arabia to deter threats from Iran — a move that will increase America’s presence in the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump falsely boasts about ending wars in the region.

The announcement, made by Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley on Friday, continues the administration’s campaign both to increase pressure on Tehran and deepen ties with Riyadh. The US has sent an additional 14,000 military members to the Middle East since May, which the 1,800 authorized Friday will add to.

The Trump administration has just sanctioned Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, as part of its “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran.

The move, which goes into effect on Wednesday, is one of the most dramatic by President Donald Trump yet since he withdrew America from the Iran nuclear deal — which Zarif helped negotiate — last year. It was expected, though, as Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said last month that Trump ordered him to sanction the Iranian diplomat.

President Donald Trump is likely to keep a crucial part of the Iran nuclear deal alive — against the advice of some of the most ardent hawks in his administration.

Multiple reports say the president is planning to renew five waivers allowing Tehran to work with foreign countries on building a civilian nuclear program. That’s a big deal, as cooperating with countries in Europe as well as Russia and China helps Iran create nuclear infrastructure for purposes other than building bombs. Indeed, countries can use nuclear power for creating energy or for medical advancements, among other things.

Iran says it has arrested 17 Iranian citizens who were aiding the CIA and that some of them have been sentenced to death — a claim Washington is denying.

Iran’s security agencies “successfully dismantled a [CIA] spy network,” the head of counterintelligence at the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence told reporters in Iran Monday. “Those who deliberately betrayed the country were handed to the judiciary,” he continued, adding that “some were sentenced to death and some to long-term imprisonment.”

The Trump administration is planning to send US Navy ships to help escort oil tankers in the Gulf in order to protect them from possible Iranian aggression. But some experts warn the move could cost a lot of money and risk pulling the US and Iran into a war neither wants.

According to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford and Gen. Mark Milley, the man tapped to replace Dunford, the US is working to build an international coalition whose navies will work together to protect oil tankers moving through the Strait of Hormuz — a vital waterway for the global energy trade — and adjoining seas.

“Be careful with the threats, Iran,” President Donald Trump tweeted on July 3. “They can come back to bite you like nobody has been bitten before.”

This was Trump’s latest warning to Iran. It came after Iranian President Hassan Rouhani confirmed that, starting this weekend, Iran would exceed stockpile limits on low-enriched uranium, in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal that the US pulled out of last year.

Iran has officially broken part of its commitment to the 2015 nuclear deal — following through on its months-long threat and further raising tensions with the United States.

In May, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country would stockpile more low-enriched uranium than the 660 pounds the nuclear accord allows. The following month, a top Iranian nuclear official said Rouhani’s wasn’t an empty threat and that Tehran would blow past the limit within 10 days.

Iran may have attacked six oil tankers in a strategic Middle Eastern waterway vital for the world’s energy shipping. It for sure shot down an advanced and expensive US military drone. And it may soon no longer abide by part of the 2015 nuclear deal, meaning it could inch closer to potentially obtaining a nuclear bomb someday.

If all this sounds aggressive, it’s because it is.

President Donald Trump called off an attack on Iran Thursday night, which would’ve been a forceful response to Tehran’s downing of a US military drone earlier that day if the president had followed through.

The two countries have been at odds since Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal last year. But the animosity skyrocketed after the US placed crippling sanctions on Iran’s economy and said it had intelligence that Iran planned attacks on Americans. Iran, meanwhile, responded by seemingly bombing oil tankers in a strategic waterway and openly bringing down a US drone.

Iran says it is just days away from breaking its end of a major nuclear deal by stockpiling forbidden amounts of uranium. If it does so, it would be the latest signal that Tehran may put itself on the path toward a nuclear weapon in direct defiance of President Donald Trump.

The 2015 nuclear agreement between Iran, the US, European powers, Russia, and China put tight restrictions on Tehran’s nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. The Obama administration’s goal was to block Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon diplomatically, instead of by force.

The US has ordered a partial withdrawal of State Department employees from Iraq over apparent fears of an imminent Iranian attack.

Early on Wednesday morning, the State Department announced it would remove non-emergency employees from the US Embassy in Baghdad and the consulate in Erbil, a city in northern Iraq. That means some full-time diplomats must now leave the country, which will temporarily bring consular and other services to a halt. Other employees who are vital to everyday functions of the mission, like the cooking staff, will remain for now.

The United States is in the midst of an extremely dangerous standoff with Iran — and President Donald Trump is mainly to blame.

Exactly one year ago Wednesday, Trump withdrew the US from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which lifted sanctions from Tehran in exchange for the country agreeing to curb its nuclear program. That wasn’t enough for Trump, though, who believed the accord was a disaster because it didn’t stop Iran’s growing ballistic missile program or sponsorship of terrorism.

Iran will no longer comply with parts of a landmark nuclear deal that prevented the country from potentially making a bomb. It’s a move that will almost certainly increase tensions with the Trump administration during an already dangerous moment.

In a Wednesday morning speech — exactly one year after Trump ended the US’ commitment to the Iran nuclear deal — Iranian President Hassan Rouhani announced two steps partly to end his country’s commitment to the accord.

On Monday, the Trump administration followed through on its promise to formally label a segment of Iran’s military forces “terrorists.” Today, Tehran fired back with its own provocative move: It now considers all US troops in the Middle East to be terrorists too.

Iranian lawmakers overwhelmingly approved the measure after the country’s defense minister introduced a bill on the issue, according to Iranian state TV. Some politicians wanted to name the entirety of the US Army — not just forces deployed in the region — as terrorists, meaning Iran’s reaction actually could’ve been worse.

The Trump administration on Monday announced it had labeled the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) — Iran’s hugely influential security and military organization responsible for the protection and survival of the regime — as a “foreign terrorist organization.”

That will make it illegal for any American or person in the US to provide IRGC members “material support or resources” — a very broad definition that can mean almost anything — and anyone with connections to the group will be denied visas to visit the US or have their current ones revoked.

A US-led conference in Warsaw this week that was intended to isolate Iran has ended up isolating America instead — highlighting one of the central problems of President Donald Trump’s foreign policy.

The two-day, hastily organized summit, which ended on Thursday, was billed as a Middle East security conference. But it was an open secret that the gathering of more than 60 countries was really about getting the world on board with America’s tough-on-Iran policy, even though the US denied that was the case.

President Donald Trump has taken hard-line stances against North Korea, China, and Iran — and in the last 72 hours, each country pushed back on America’s pressure campaign.

On Friday, North Korea threatened to build more nuclear weapons unless the US offers some sanctions relief. Three days later, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing would survive the trade war with America and continue exporting goods around the world. Also on Monday, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani vowed to “break” Trump’s latest and greatest imposition of financial penalties.