President Donald Trump said Monday that he will announce Tuesday his decision on whether the United States will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.
"I will be announcing my decision on the Iran Deal tomorrow from the White House at 2:00pm," tweeted Trump, who is expected to pull out of the agreement.
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Trump's tweet came days after senior Trump administration officials confirmed the intelligence findings reported by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as authentic. Netanyahu last week revealed the existence of thousands of secret files showing Iran lied for years about having a clandestine nuclear weapons program. Officials told the Washington Free Beacon the revelation was a "powerful presentation" by Israel outlining why the Iran nuclear deal must be fixed or killed.
Proponents of the deal, like French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have tried to lobby Trump to stay in the deal. In addition, former Secretary of State John Kerry has met with foreign leaders in a shadow effort to save the landmark accord, which he helped negotiate as part of the Obama administration. In a last-gasp push to preserve the nuclear deal, Kerry has met with foreign leaders like German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Macron.
Trump went on Twitter on Monday to rebuke Kerry for initiating unsanctioned and "possibly illegal" talks with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, as well as with the French and German heads of state in a concerted effort to keep the agreement intact.
Under the deal struck in 2015, Iran took steps to curb its nuclear program in exchange for sanctions relief. Trump and other critics of the deal have argued that its provisions on inspections of Iranian nuclear sites are not strict enough, that it needs to include limitations on Iran's ballistic missile program, and that key restrictions on Tehran's program set to expire in about a decade need to be extended.
"In seven years, that deal will have expired and Iran is free to go ahead and create nuclear weapons," Trump said at a press conference last week. "That is not acceptable. Seven years is tomorrow. That's not acceptable."