WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Tuesday that he is pulling the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, the most consequential foreign policy decision of his presidency so far, and will reinstate a punishing array of U.S. economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the landmark 2015 accord.
Speaking from the Diplomatic Reception Room at the White House, Trump said he would impose the "highest level of economic sanctions" on Iran. Countries or companies that continue to invest in or do business there could risk violating U.S. sanctions, with vast political and economic repercussions.
The decision was more severe than diplomats had expected and sent shock waves around the globe. It could isolate the United States among its largest European allies, all of which had pleaded with Trump to keep the historic pact intact while they tried to fix its flaws.
In an 11-minute address, Trump called the Iran deal "decaying and rotten," but he did not offer any specifics of how he would replace it or how he would restrain Iran from rebuilding its nuclear infrastructure should it choose to do so.
The White House said new sanctions would target Iran's energy, petrochemical and financial sectors. That effectively takes the United States out of the agreement even though the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations nuclear watchdog agency, repeatedly has found that Iran is complying with its requirements.
"We're out of the deal. We're out of the deal," John Bolton, Trump's national security adviser and a longtime opponent of the accord, said emphatically after the president's address.
He said the "only sure way" to stop Iran from developing nuclear weapons is to abandon the deal and craft a new pact that also restricts Tehran's support for terrorism, its ballistic missile program and its role fostering turmoil in Syria, Yemen and elsewhere.
Trump had faced a self-imposed Saturday deadline to renew waivers that eased sanctions on Iran's central bank, which deals with that nation's oil exports. Another set of sanctions, focused on more than 400 Iranian companies, individuals and sectors, is up for renewal July 11.
Bolton told reporters that U.S. sanctions in place before the agreement — including restrictions on new business ventures involving shipping, energy, gold, metals and other products — would resume immediately. He said more sanctions likely will be added.
Companies with existing contracts would be given 90 or 180 days, depending on the industry, to wind them down. Countries that buy oil from Iran will have to steadily lower imports. The Treasury Department will begin blacklisting Iranian banks and other entities by November.
Trump's pull-out pleased Iran hawks in Congress and U.S. allies in Israel and Saudi Arabia, which both agreed with Trump that the deal gave Iran too much leeway to someday rebuild nuclear programs that could be used to produce a bomb.
Reinstating sanctions on Iran's oil exports would most directly affect Europe, Japan and South Korea. But it probably would lead to a jump in oil prices and higher U.S. prices at the pump. Beneficiaries of rising crude oil prices would include Russia, Venezuela and other producers.
Trump's decision could ratchet up tensions in the already volatile Middle East, strain relations with U.S. allies in Europe, complicate dealings with Russia and China, and undermine Trump's efforts to get North Korea to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement that Israel "fully supports" Trump's decision.
"Israel has opposed the nuclear deal from the start because we said that rather than blocking Iran's path to a bomb, the deal actually paved Iran's path to an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs, and this within a few years' time," he said. "The deal didn't push war further away, it actually brought it closer."
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said his country would remain in the deal for now and open negotiations with the remaining signatories about preserving the accord. "If we can guarantee our interests, we will save it," he said on Iranian TV.
But he said he had ordered two Iranian atomic energy organizations to be ready to resume industrial-scale uranium enrichment in several weeks if the negotiations are not successful.
Rouhani reiterated that Iran has complied with its obligations under the accord and that it was the United States that did not fulfill its commitments.
"I am sorry for the American people who are a great people but unfortunately administrated by people who are not wise," he said.
Former President Barack Obama, who has rarely criticized Trump in public, staunchly defended what he considered a signature achievement for his administration. In a lengthy statement Tuesday, he called Trump's decision "misguided" and "a serious mistake."
It "turns our back on America's closest allies, and an agreement that our country's leading diplomats, scientists, and intelligence professionals negotiated," Obama said.
He added, "the consistent flouting of agreements that our country is a party to risks eroding America's credibility, and puts us at odds with the world's major powers."
The other signatories to the Iran accord — Britain, France, Russia, China and Germany — vowed to continue to honor the agreement, although it's not clear how they will negotiate the web of U.S. sanctions.
French President Emmanuel Macron, who visited the White House last month to urge Trump to stay in the deal and spoke to him by phone early Tuesday, tweeted a warning: "The nuclear non-proliferation regime is at stake."
In a joint statement, Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister Theresa May expressed "regret and concern" about Trump's decision. They said the Iran deal "remains important for our shared security."
The European Union's top diplomat, Federica Mogherini, said the bloc would do all it could to maintain the pact. "It belongs to the entire international community," she told reporters in Rome. "The European Union is determined to preserve it."
Underscoring the U.S. isolation, the U.N. secretary-general, Antonio Guterres, said he was "deeply concerned" and called on other parties to "abide fully by their respective commitments" under the accord.
Turkey, a NATO ally, vowed to defy the sanctions. Turkey's economy minister, Nihat Zeybekci, told CNN Turk that to the extent possible, Turkey would continue trade with Iran.
It wasn't immediately clear if Russia, China and other major trading partners would also attempt to buck the sanctions. That could increase tensions with those countries or weaken the U.S. effort to pressure Iran.
"I don't think China's going to play ball at all," said Richard Nephew, who was the Obama administration's lead sanctions adviser in crafting the nuclear deal. "I think they're going to push back real damn hard."
Trump's new national security team, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Bolton, were vociferous critics of the deal. Trump said Pompeo is en route to North Korea for the second time in a month to help prepare for a planned summit with ruler Kim Jong Un.
(David S. Cloud, Laura King and Sarah Wire of the Tribune Washington Bureau, Los Angeles Times staff writer Alexandra Zavis in Jerusalem, and special correspondent Ramin Mostaghim in Tehran contributed to this story.)
© 2018 Los Angeles Times. Visit Los Angeles Times at www.latimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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