On May 8, 2018, President Donald Trump announced that the United States will reimpose sanctions on Iran, thereby violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) established under President Barack Obama’s administration.

The JCPOA, or the Iran deal, was agreed upon in 2015 by Iran, the United States, Russia, France, China the United Kingdom, Germany, and the European Union. The Iran deal involved Iran agreeing “under no circumstances [to] seek, develop or acquire any nuclear weapons,” unless the intention behind such actions is “exclusively peaceful.”

Trump publicly and rather vehemently opposed the Iran deal by, for instance, calling it “the worst deal ever.” According to NBC News, other critics of the agreement claim “the deal itself is flawed and does not prevent Iran from engaging in aggressive actions that fall outside the pact’s purview, such as pursuing a ballistic missile program and expiration dates on some restrictions, as well as extending its influence throughout the region.”

In October of last year, Trump attempted to leave the agreement via Congress legislation, but “failed to attract enough supporters,” reported the Huffington Post. Trump then posed that the U.S. would leave the agreement if Europe did not “fix the deal before May 12, when sanctions waivers would need to be extended, or the U.S. will walk away.”

Supporters of the deal, such as French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, acknowledge that the deal is flawed, but “Plan B” does not exist, that “an imperfect deal is better than no deal,” and that the deal is “not negotiable.”

Trump said any country that helps Iran obtain nuclear weapons would also be “strongly sanctioned.”

CNN reported that “Trump’s decision could have explosive consequences, straining longstanding US alliances, disrupting oil markets and boosting tensions in the Middle East.”

Former President Barack Obama expressed his disapproval of the decision as well, calling it a “serious mistake” that may end in “a nuclear-armed Iran or another war in the Middle East.”