President Trump has announced that the United States will withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, also informally known as the Iran nuclear deal) that was entered into in 2015 by Iran, the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom. The JCPOA was negotiated in an effort to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program would be used exclusively for non-military, peaceful means. On January 16, 2016, the JCPOA was formally implemented and certain trade and economic sanctions against Iran were relaxed by the other parties to the deal. From its inception, the Iran nuclear deal has had its share of proponents and critics, and was a hot-button issue during the 2016 presidential election. During the campaign, and since, President Trump repeatedly stated that the deal was “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” In making today’s announcement, President Trump stated that the JCPOA was “defective at its core” since it would not prevent Iran from ultimately developing a nuclear bomb. He argued that the sunset provisions of the deal and the onsite inspection provisions were clearly inadequate, and at the time when the United States had “maximum leverage,” it entered into a deal that gave Iran, a “leading state sponsor of terrorism,” billions of dollars. The president called the agreement “a great embarrassment to me as a citizen and all citizens of the United States.”