1/ Donald Trump announced the US will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and will instead impose sanctions on the country. "This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made … It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will,” Trump said.
2/ Immediately after Trump’s announcement, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani blasted the US for not fulfilling the international pact and said that Iran plans to remain in the deal without Washington’s participation.
3/ UK Prime Minister Theresa May, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron released a joint statement emphasizing their continued commitment to the accord. “The world is a safer place as a result” of the Iran deal, they said. gov.uk/government/new…
4/ Trump said the US will reinstate the “highest level of economic sanctions” on Iran. But even the threat of pulling out of the nuclear deal has already impacted the country’s economy. Iran’s currency, the rial, is at the lowest rate it has ever been.
5/ Sam Sinai, a Ph.D. student at Harvard who grew up in Iran, reacted to the news: “I kept having recurring nightmares about this up to the point the nuclear deal was signed and for the past three years.”
6/ “I was hoping that the two countries would go on a path of conflict resolution to diplomacy. The new administration completely threw that out in the wind and it's yet another missed opportunity to come to a better state of affairs,” Sinai said.
7/ Looking ahead to possible nuclear negotiations with North Korea, @suzannedimaggio from @NewAmerica wonders how Kim Jong-un will interpret Trump’s decision to pull out of a negotiated deal with Iran.
8/ More from @suzannedimaggio: “[Trump] should be pointing to the Iran deal, and its most intrusive inspections regime ever negotiated, as a model for any future agreement with the North Koreans. And instead, he has dealt a significant blow to nuclear verification.”
9/ Lastly, from our archive: In 2015, former NYT reporter and Iran expert @stephenkinzer wrote about why the Iran deal would bring peace to the world. It’s a reminder of the stakes and hopes of when the deal was first agreed. gpinvestigations.pri.org/the-iran-accor…
