Trump torpedoed the Iran nuclear deal. Now he's calling for another one

President Donald Trump on Wednesday vowed to negotiate a "verified nuclear peace agreement" with Iran, saying he wants to avoid a military clash by reaching a deal that prevents Tehran from acquiring an atomic weapon.

Trump, who withdrew from the 2015 nuclear accord that Iran negotiated with the Obama administration, effectively called for a do-over on Wednesday. In an early morning post on his social media site, the president said the United States and Iran "should start working on it immediately, and have a big Middle East Celebration when it is signed and completed."

The diplomatic entreaty by the president came just hours after he announced a very different strategy toward Iran: a return to the "maximum pressure" campaign that he employed during his first term to threaten the country's religious leadership with vast economic sanctions and other measures designed to isolate the regime.


"Iran's behavior threatens the national interest of the United States; it is therefore in the national interest to impose maximum pressure on the Iranian regime to end its nuclear threat, curtail its ballistic missile program and stop its support for terrorist groups," Trump wrote in the order he announced Tuesday.

That order triggered a harsh response from the Iranian government, which claimed in a statement that Iran is not pursuing a nuclear weapon and that there was no need for economic punishments by the United States.

"Maximum pressure is a failed experiment, and trying it again will lead to another failure," said Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, according to Shargh, an Iranian news outlet.

American intelligence officials have said they believe Iran has not yet made the decision to build a nuclear bomb. But they have said Tehran has continued to enrich fuel for a potential weapon and have explored how they could build a crude weapon in a matter of days or weeks if they decided that it was necessary.

The president's desire to engage in negotiations is a turnabout from his first term, when he often derided former President Barack Obama for agreeing to a nuclear deal with Iran. Under that deal, Iran turned over 97% of its nuclear material and limited its research and development work, but did not dismantle all its facilities.