United States President Donald Trump finally made his move against the Iran nuclear deal in the second week of October. In a rambling speech on October 13, he virtually repudiated the nuclear deal the Barack Obama administration had painstakingly negotiated with Iran along with five other governments. Trump announced that he wold not certify that Iran was complying with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the nuclear deal is called formally. The deadline for presidential certification was October 15. Trump said he was directing his administration “to work closely with the U.S. Congress and our allies to address the deal’s many serious flaws so that the Iranian regime can never threaten the world with nuclear weapons”. His action does not mean that the U.S. has formally withdrawn from the nuclear deal, but it is a significant step forward in his professed goal of dismantling it and reintroducing sanctions against Iran. In his speech, Trump used the kind of jargon he used on the campaign trail to describe the U.S.- Iran nuclear deal, calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into”. The Iranian side had made a lot of concessions to make the deal a reality, including the right for intrusive inspection of its nuclear facilities. When the deal was signed in 2015, it was greeted with enthusiasm by the international community barring Israel and the U.S.’ new-found allies in the Arab world such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. Congress, dominated by the Republican Party, was overwhelmingly against the signing of the nuclear deal but could do little to stymie it. Trump has now given it another opportunity to do so. Many Republicans are in cahoots with the rich and influential pro-Israeli lobby in the country. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had been trying his best to developments took place. Trump chose Israel and Saudi Arabia as his first port of call after taking over as President in January 2017. Trump, in his speech, demanded that the nuclear deal be renegotiated in such a way that Iran was permanently barred from testing its missiles and conducting meaningful nuclear research in the future. His speech against Iran, the most belligerent by any U.S. President so far, contained a litany of lies and was littered with calumny against the Iranian people and their leadership. Trump claimed with a straight face that the deal gave Iran “over $100 billion its government could use to fund terrorism”. The money, rightfully belonging to Iran, was frozen in Western banks as the draconian international and unilateral U.S. sanctions came into play. The funds were used by the Iranian government to prop up the faltering economy. Trump claimed that the Obama administration signed the nuclear deal with Iran when the Iranian government was on the verge of collapsing as a result of international sanctions. Iran has never instigated war against any nation. On the other hand, it has been targeted continuously since the Islamic Revolution of 1979. More than a million Iranians perished in the eight-year-long Iraq-Iran war of the 1980s that was instigated by the U.S. and Saudi Arabia.