WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump announced Monday that his long-awaited decision on whether to tear up the Iran nuclear deal would come Tuesday.
The announcement could well be one of the most consequential of his presidency. And in typical Trump fashion, he teased it with a tweet.
Trump has long criticized the deal _ brokered by the United States, Britain, Russia, France, China and Germany _ promising during and after his campaign that he would tear it up. His new national security adviser, John Bolton, is also a major opponent.
But Trump has held off killing the deal during past opportunities, giving European allies a chance to toughen it up. The leaders of France and Germany were the latest to appeal to Trump during visits to the White House last month in which they urged him to keep the U.S. in the deal.
Trump has kept up his criticism of the agreement, however, and on Monday denounced former Secretary of State John Kerry's back-channel attempts to save the deal in a separate Monday tweet.
"The United States does not need John Kerry's possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal," Trump wrote on Twitter. "He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!"
Trump has several options, in addition to tearing the deal up and staying in. He could also choose to continue discussions to rework the deal. Or he could decline to recertify the deal without formally pulling out.
