In this photo released by an official website of the office of the Iranian Presidency, President Hassan Rouhani attends a meeting with officials and industrialists, at a petroleum conference in Tehran,... (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on President Donald Trump's decision on the Iran nuclear deal (all times local): 
 
 2:25 p.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump says the United States is withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, which he is calling "defective at its core." 
 
 Trump on Tuesday signed a presidential memorandum withdrawing from the 2015 agreement and he is planning to reinstall sanctions on the Iranian regime. He says in an address to the nation that he will be reinstituting the highest level of sanctions and warning any country not to help the Iranian government. 
 
 Trump says America "will not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail" and will not allow "a regime that chants 'Death to America'" to get access to nuclear weapons. 
 
 The president says he made the decision after consulting with U.S. allies. 
 
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 2:20 p.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump is railing against the Iran nuclear agreement as "a horrible, one-sided deal" based on a lie. 
 
 Trump's comments Tuesday come as he announces plans to follow through on his campaign threat to pull out of the landmark nuclear accord with Iran during a televised address at the White House. 
 
 Trump says that if he allowed the deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race. 
 
 He also says a constructive deal could easily have been struck at the time, but it wasn't. 
 
 Trump is calling Iran a "regime of great terror." 
 
 And he says that "no action taken by the regime has been more dangerous than its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the means of delivering them." 
 
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 2:15 p.m. 
 
 Israel's military says forces are on high alert and is urging civilians in the Golan Heights near Syria to prepare bomb shelters. 
 
 The military directive Tuesday came "following the identification of irregular activity of Iranian forces in Syria." It said defense systems have been deployed. 
 
 The statement came as President Donald Trump was set to announce Tuesday whether the U.S. will exit the 2015 agreement between Iran and world powers. 
 
 The possibility of the nuclear deal collapsing has raised concerns it might embolden Iran to strike Israeli targets. 
 
 Israel is believed to have been behind recent airstrikes on military bases in Syria that killed Iranian soldiers, prompting Tehran to vow retaliation. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement. It has warned it will not tolerate archenemy Iran establishing itself militarily on its doorstep. 
 
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 1:40 p.m. 
 
 Iran's state-run news agency is quoting an anonymous official saying President Hassan Rouhani (hah-SAHN' roh-HAH'-nee) will give a televised address after President Donald Trump announces his intention to pull America out of the Iran nuclear deal. 
 
 IRNA filed the report late Tuesday, just ahead of Trump's speech from the White House's Diplomatic Room. 
 
 IRNA offered no other immediate details. 
 
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 12:55 p.m. 
 
 President Donald Trump is following through on his campaign threat and withdrawing the U.S. from the landmark nuclear accord with Iran. 
 
 That's according to two people familiar with the decision, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record. They did not have any details on how the withdrawal would unfold. 
 
 Trump is expected to make the announcement Tuesday afternoon. 
 
 It wasn't immediately clear which sanctions lifted under the deal that Trump plans to immediately re-impose. He has several options. A more limited move could leave Trump more room to potentially stay in the deal if other members agree to toughen it. 
 
 The president has long criticized the 2015 agreement, which lifted most U.S. and international sanctions against the country. In return, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear program making it impossible to produce a bomb, along with rigorous inspections. 
 
 The decision deals a profound blow to some of America's closest allies — including Britain, France and Germany, who joined the U.S. only three years ago to sign the deal. ||||| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Donald Trump struck a blow against the 2015 Iran nuclear deal on Friday, defying both U.S. allies and adversaries by refusing to formally certify that Tehran is complying with the accord even though international inspectors say it is. 
 
 Warning that he might ultimately terminate the agreement, Trump’s move was a major change in U.S. foreign policy at a time when his administration is also in a crisis with North Korea over that country’s nuclear ambitions. 
 
 It was the second time in two days that Trump took aim at the legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama after signing an executive order on Thursday to weaken the Democratic former president’s signature healthcare reform. 
 
 Hailed by Obama as key to stopping Iran from building a nuclear bomb, the deal was also signed by China, France, Russia, Britain, Germany and the European Union. 
 
 But Trump says it was too lenient on Tehran and effectively left the fate of the deal up to the U.S. Congress which might try to modify it or bring back U.S. sanctions previously imposed on Iran. 
 
 “We will not continue down a path whose predictable conclusion is more violence, more terror and the very real threat of Iran’s nuclear breakout,” Trump said. 
 
 European allies have warned of a split with Washington over the nuclear agreement and say that putting it in limbo as Trump has done undermines U.S. credibility abroad. 
 
 Trump’s “America First” approach to international agreements has also led him to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate accord and the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade talks and renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement with Canada and Mexico. 
 
 IRAN REACTION 
 
 Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said on Friday that Tehran was committed to the deal and accused Trump of making baseless accusations. 
 
 “The Iranian nation has not and will never bow to any foreign pressure,” he said. “Iran and the deal are stronger than ever.” 
 
 The chief of the U.N. atomic watchdog reiterated that Iran was under the world’s “most robust nuclear verification regime” and that Tehran is complying with the deal. 
 
 “The nuclear-related commitments undertaken by Iran under the JCPOA are being implemented,” Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency said, referring to the deal by its formal name. 
 
 Under U.S. law, the president must certify every 90 days to Congress that Iran is complying with the deal, which Trump had reluctantly done twice. 
 
 Two administration officials privy to the Iran policy debate said Trump this time ultimately ignored the opinions of his secretary of defence, secretary of state, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, his chief of staff and his national security advisor. 
 
 Instead, one of the officials said, Trump listened to the more hardline views of (CIA Director Mike) Pompeo and some outsiders. 
 
 U.S. Democrats criticized Trump’s decision. Senator Ben Cardin said: “At a moment when the United States and its allies face a nuclear crisis with North Korea, the president has manufactured a new crisis that will isolate us from our allies and partners.” 
 
 In Brussels, EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Washington could not unilaterally cancel the accord. 
 
 “We cannot afford as the international community to dismantle a nuclear agreement that is working,” said Mogherini, who chaired the final stages of the landmark talks. “This deal is not a bilateral agreement. 
 
 U.S. President Donald Trump speaks about Iran and the Iran nuclear deal in the Diplomatic Room of the White House in Washington, U.S., October 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque 
 
 CONGRESS DECIDES 
 
 The U.S. Congress will now have 60 days to decide whether to reimpose economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted under the pact. 
 
 If Congress reimposes the sanctions, the United States would in effect be in violation of the terms of the nuclear deal and it would likely fall apart. If lawmakers do nothing, the deal remains in place. 
 
 Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker was working on amending a law on Iran to include “trigger points” that if crossed by Tehran would automatically reimpose U.S. sanctions. 
 
 A source familiar with the issue said the triggers include reimposing U.S. sanctions if Tehran were deemed to be less than a year away from developing a nuclear weapon. 
 
 The trigger points are also expected to address tougher nuclear inspections, Iran’s ballistic missile programme and eliminate the deal’s “sunset clauses” under which some of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear programme expire over time. 
 
 It is far from clear Congress will be able to pass the legislation. 
 
 Trump warned that if “we are not able to reach a solution working with Congress and our allies, then the agreement will be terminated.” 
 
 He singled out Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for sanctions and delivered a blistering critique of Tehran, which he accused of destabilising actions in Syria, Yemen and Iraq. 
 
 The Trump administration censured the Revolutionary Guards but stopped short of labelling the group a foreign terrorist organisation. 
 
 The body is the single most dominant player in Iran’s security, political, and economic systems and wields enormous influence in Iran’s domestic and foreign policies. 
 
 It had already previously been sanctioned by the United States under other authorities, and the immediate impact of Friday’s measure is likely to be symbolic. 
 
 Slideshow (13 Images) 
 
 The U.S. military said on Friday it was identifying new areas where it could work with allies to put pressure on Iran in support of Trump’s new strategy and was reviewing the positioning of U.S. forces. 
 
 But U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Iran had not responded to Trump’s announcement with any provocative acts so far.
– In a move he's been signalling for some time, President Trump on Tuesday withdrew the US from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, reports NBC News. “This is a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never ever been made," said the president in a televised news conference. "It didn't bring calm, it didn't bring peace, and it never will.” Trump, who accused Tehran of lying about its nuclear ambitions, also said the US would be reimposing the highest level of sanctions and warned other nations not to assist Iran, reports the AP. After his news conference, he signed a presidential memorandum to make the move official. The decision puts the US at odds with its European allies, which urged Trump to stick with the deal, and raises the possibility of tension with Russia and China, notes the New York Times. “We cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” Trump said in his remarks, adding that the agreement was "defective at its core" and an "embarrassment to me as a citizen and all citizens of the United States.” Doing away with what was considered President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement fulfills an oft-stated campaign pledge of Trump's, notes the Washington Post. Trump cited documents revealed last week by Israel suggesting that Iran had a nuclear weapons program in the 1990s, something it has repeatedly denied, and lied about that fact during negotiations for the 2015 accord. "At the heart of the Iran deal was a giant fiction," Trump asserted.