Skip to content
Search AI Powered

Latest Stories

Former CIA Director Just Listed All the Ways Donald Trump Made Us Less Safe by Pulling Out of the Iran Deal

That's not good.

Former CIA Director John Brennan rebuked President Donald Trump's decision to pull the United States out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Brennan, who has often criticized the president for his habit of undermining the intelligence agencies he's supposed to rely on, called the move a sign of "madness" that is "a danger to our national security" in a post on Twitter:


Today, Donald Trump simultaneously lied about the Iranian nuclear deal, undermined global confidence in US commitments, alienated our closest allies, strengthened Iranian hawks, & gave North Korea more reason to keep its nukes. This madness is a danger to our national security.

Brennan, who now works as an analyst for NBC and MSNBC, also voiced his concerns on the air.

“This is not just foolish, this is dangerous,” he said. “And Mr. Trump has repeatedly misrepresented the facts of the nuclear deal with Iran. He’s basically lied to the American people and lied to the world about what that deal entails.”

Brennan has described himself as "nonpartisan." He insists, however, that Trump is a danger to the republic who has failed to fulfill his duties as the leader of a nation now reeling from sizeable hits to its credibility.

“I think he is dishonest. He lacks integrity. He has very questionable ethics and morality. And he views the world through a prism of how it’s going to help Donald Trump,” Brennan told NPR last month. “And I just think that he has not fulfilled the responsibilities of the president of the United States office.”

Indeed, the president failed to offer solutions during yesterday's announcement that the United States would exit the landmark agreement.

“It is clear to me that we cannot prevent an Iranian nuclear bomb under the decaying and rotten structure of the current agreement,” Trump said from the White House Diplomatic Room. “The Iran deal is defective at its core. If we do nothing we know exactly what will happen.”

Trump had long campaigned against the nuclear deal and made exiting the agreement one of the signature pledges of his candidacy during the 2016 presidential election. He noted that any nation that helps Iran obtain nuclear weapons would also be “strongly sanctioned.”

“This was a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made,” the President said. “It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”

The president had earlier criticized the deal as one of the Obama administration’s “worst” decisions, and in his statements, he expressed his belief that the deal served to benefit the Iranian regime while sponsoring terrorism.

“At the point when the US had maximum leverage, this disastrous deal gave this regime — and it’s a regime of great terror — many billions of dollars, some of it in actually cash — a great embarrassment to me as a citizen,” Trump said.

Brennan is far from the only political figure to condemn the president's action. In a joint statement, the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany expressed "regret and concern," acknowledging they wish to sustain the agreement, which provided Iran some relief from international sanctions in exchange for limits on and guarantees of transparency about its nuclear aspirations.

European leaders had earlier tried––and failed––to convince the president to preserve the nuclear deal.

French President Emmanuel Macron met with President Trump last month and urged Congress to not only stay in the deal, but seek to improve it. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, in separate meetings with the president, also urged him to keep the deal, agreeing with the assessment from U.S. intelligence agencies and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the deal limits Iran’s nuclear capabilities for now and that Iran has always complied.

Proponents of exiting the agreement have cited weaknesses that the leaders of France, Germany, and Britain themselves have acknowledged and pledged to improve. These include:

  • eliminating expiration dates on vital restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activity, allowing Iran to resume large-scale processing of nuclear fuel starting in 2025
  • allowing inspections of military sites, which Iran currently prohibits
  • limiting Iran’s ballistic missile program
  • addressing Iran’s support for terrorist groups across the Middle East

But Trump's decision, writes CNN's Stephen Collinson, "opened a new window into Trump's political soul, showing his willingness to unleash the kind of chaos abroad he has fomented at home":

The decision added context to his "America First" foreign policy doctrine and showed he is adamant about following through on campaign promises that horrified America's allies.

And it revealed two other pillars of the Trump presidency––a propensity to turn even the most crucial moments into a global televised drama, and his ravenous desire to eradicate President Barack Obama from the history books.

Speaking on the air yesterday, Marie Harf, a political commentator for Fox News who worked as the Senior Advisor of Strategic Communications to former Secretary of State John Kerry and led the Iran nuclear negotiations communications strategy, criticized the president’s move, observing that “saying it [that the United States will exit the deal] doesn’t just make it so.”

Harf noted, in particular, that the president only condemned the deal, and never offered a course of action going forward:

I thought what was interesting was that Donald Trump said a lot about what he didn’t like in the deal. He said a lot about how bad Iran’s behavior is, and he said very little about what comes next, and how he will actually work to fix the deal, whether he has a comprehensive plan in place, and he almost made an implicit military threat when he said, ‘If Iran moves in a direction we don’t want them to, they will face a problem like they’ve never seen before.’

So for a lot of us, the question facing the president today wasn’t whether or not we should have done the deal originally. We know how he feels about that. It’s what the best course is moving forward, and if tomorrow Iran kicks out the inspectors, if they restart their enrichment because now we have made the deal null and void, what will Donald Trump do? We did not hear details about how he will prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon going forward, and I think it’s incumbent upon him and his administration now to lay out their case for how they will do that.

More from People/donald-trump

Jesse Watters
Fox News

Jesse Watters Dragged After Adding Another Mind-Boggling Rule For 'Real Men'

Fox News host Jesse Watters, who is apparently an authority of what it means to be a manly man, gave jazz hands to make a point about how "real men" should or shouldn't wave.

The target of his ridicule was Tim Walz, the enthusiastic Democratic Minnesota governor and vice presidential candidate who often greets the public by raising both hands in the air to wave.

Keep ReadingShow less
Screenshots of crowd at town hall and Rep. Mike Flood
@MorePerfectUS/X; KETV NewsWatch 7

GOP Rep. Goes Viral For His Response To Crowd Chanting 'Tax The Rich' At Town Hall

Nebraska Republican Representative Mike Flood was criticized following his incredulous response to a crowd that chanted "Tax the rich!" during a town hall meeting.

The Columbus High School auditorium hosted the town hall on Tuesday evening, drawing "nearly 380" attendees, according to local network KETV Omaha. The event was lively, with Flood facing both sharp criticism over Trump administration policies and some appreciation for showing up in person.

Keep ReadingShow less
Elon Musk
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Awkward Typo In Elon Musk's Bizarre 'Education Department' Trump Meme Is A Total Self-Own

Billionaire Elon Musk was widely mocked after he celebrated President Donald Trump's executive order to begin to dismantle the Department of Education (DOE) by posting a meme of Trump at the department's grave, only for an awkward misspelling to get all the attention.

Polling indicates that eliminating the Education Department is largely unpopular, with 60% of registered voters opposing the move, according to a Quinnipiac University survey conducted March 6-10. Support stands at 33%, with opposition particularly strong among Democrats—98% oppose it, while just 1% support it.

Keep ReadingShow less
JB Pritzker; Donald Trump
Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images; Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images

Dem Governor Reveals Trump's Bonkers Demand In Exchange For Equipment During COVID

Illinois Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker revealed during a speech this week that he clashed with President Donald Trump during the first Trump administration after Trump promised necessary medical equipment during the COVID pandemic on the condition that Pritzker praise him publicly.

Five years ago, the United States was grappling with the initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. The country had entered shutdowns that had severe economic consequences, leaving businesses and industries on the brink of collapse.

Keep ReadingShow less
Scrabble tiles spelling the word scam
Scam spelled with scrabbles on a wooden table

People Break Down How They Realized An Entire Industry Was A Total Scam

We unfortunately live in a world where scams are on the rise.

Thankfully, some of them are pretty easy to detect, such as an automated call from the IRS telling you a warrant is out for your arrest, or an email claiming to be from Amazon or the USPS asking for your credit card information, only to look closer and see the email address is a yahoo account.

Keep ReadingShow less