POTUS described the Obama-era agreement as "defective at its core" and said the United States would "not be held hostage to nuclear blackmail."
A few hours later, former US President Barack Obama called his successor's move "misguided," adding that the decision "risks eroding America's credibility and puts us at odds with the world's major powers."
Speaking to Radio Sputnik's Loud & Clear, investigative journalist Gareth Porter, who specializes in US national security policy, suggested that 45's announcement was raising the possibility of war.
"I definitely think the danger of war has suddenly increased because of the announcement by Donald Trump and the plan that they have at this moment is certainly uncertain," Porter told show hosts Brian Becker and John Kiriakou. "Whether they do have a plan is doubtful and what we do know is that he's working on a game plan that was closely scripted in conjunction with, if not written by, [Israeli Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu himself."
"It sounded, certainly in the early part of the speech, as though it was something that was scripted by Netanyahu because he gave unqualified applause to what Netanyahu did last week… in his bizarre, from my point of view, presentation of the idea that… Israeli commandos had captured half a ton of secret military documents on a covert nuclear weapons research program that were hidden in plain sight in Tehran without any security whatsoever," he continued.
"So that was not a good start, but I think what we saw here is the Trump response to his political base based on the promise that he made that he would tear up the [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] and his conviction that this was a bad deal," Porter said, stressing that it "takes us into uncharted territory."
With Becker hinting that the US, Israel and Saudi Arabia are engaged in a "coordinated" strategy against Iran, Porter pointed out a December 2017 meeting that involved top US and Israeli officials.
"Last December there was a reported meeting, by the Israeli press… that there was a meeting between top officials of the Trump administration and officials of the Netanyahu government to map out a common strategy toward Iran, which would include several elements that certainly comprehended the question of what to do about the Iran nuclear deal, but also of course was going to deal with what was going on in Syria," Porter told Becker. "The Israeli plan to take the offensive in a very aggressive way through bombing of sites which the Iranian forces have been using, which are Syrian government bases far from the Israeli border… so what this shows me is that this combination of the Israeli offensive in Syria and the Netanyahu presentation of this phony documentation… is fair to say was scripted between the United States and Israel."
Porter, who is also the author of "Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare," later told Kiriakou that reports indicating Iran was in contact with the Taliban might've had more to do with the country trying to work together on fighting Daesh.
"It's perfectly credible to me… to believe that the Iranians have made contact with the Taliban leadership, as has the United States in the past, to actually help fight against ISIS [Daesh], which has established bases in Afghanistan," Porter said. "And if there were a rational policy in the United States, we'd be doing the same thing, who knows, maybe we tried to do it, I don't know, but I doubt it."
"I think that accounts for… the majority of the reports that have come in about Iran and the Taliban," he added.
