May 8, 2018, 5:33 PM GMT / Updated May 8, 2018, 8:32 PM GMT By Jonathan Allen, Alex Moe and Frank Thorp V 
 
 WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump announced Tuesday that he is withdrawing the United States from the Iran nuclear deal, reneging on a landmark pact and raising fears that Tehran might respond by resuming its frozen weapons program.  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." 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. "But 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." Meanwhile, French President Emanuel Macron, who spoke with Trump Tuesday morning before the announcement, tweeted his "regret" over the president's decision. Still, some in the administration and outside it were hopeful that his declaration would create pressure on Iran and America's partners in that deal — Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China — to negotiate a new agreement in which Iran abandons its ballistic missile development, funding of terrorist groups, stated quest to destroy Israel and cyber-attacks on the U.S. and its allies. The president has long criticized the 2015 agreement, which lifted most U.S. and international sanctions against the country.
– 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.