of "velshi & ruhle." i'll be back at 3:00 p.m. eastern. my colleague stephanie ruhle will join me. time to hand it over to andrea mitchell for "andrea mitchell reports." dismantling the deal. this hour president trump will announce he will no longer certify the iran deal, leaving a crucial decision about whether to reimpose sanctions and officially leave the decision up to congress. >> in a little while i'll be giving a speech on iran, a terrorist nation like few others, and i think you're going to find it very interesting. health care sabotage? donald trump going after the signature initiative of his predecessor, clipping key subsidies for low-cost health insurance plans, potentially sending premium costs climbing. >> one by one, it's going to come down and we're going to have great health care in our country. we are going to have great

health care in our country. and miracle with a mystery. an american mother saved along with her family after being held by the taliban for five years. but her husband's actions are raising a lot of questions today and a lot of ire from kaitlyn coleman's father. >> what i can say is i'm taking your pregnant wife to a very dangerous place. to me and the kind of person i am, it's unconscionable. >> and good day. i'm andrea mitchell in washington. president trump is expected to overrule some of his top foreign policy advisers and move to decertify the iran nuclear deal negotiated by the obama administration. but he will not follow his initial instinct to withdraw from the deal altogether. in a compromise crafted by his national security adviser, mr. trump will pass the buck to a reluctant congress, hoping that

congress will pass legislation to toughen sanctions on iran for its non-nuclear behavior, including its ballistic missile program and support for terrorism in the region. critics, including america's closest allies in europe, say even this compromise will isolate the u.s. and strengthen russia and china, as well as signalling to north korea that it doesn't pay to negotiate with the trump administration. nbc white house correspondent kristen welker joins me now. kristen, this is another effort by the president to undo a lot of president obama's legacy. we'll talk in a minute about health care, but the nuclear deal, his primary legacy in terms of foreign policy. >> reporter: absolutely. this is his latest move to unravel the obama foreign policy legacy. and as you pointed out, andrea, this is essentially president trump walking a fine line in order to, in his view, live up to his campaign vow. of course, he campaigned on the promise to scrap the iran nuclear deal. this doesn't go that far.

as you say, it essentially kicks the deal to congress for a 60-day review period. congress will decide whether to slap additional sanctions on iran. in talking to aides in capitol hill, there is not a big appetite, i can tell you, andrea, to do that, because they don't want to be seen as being in compliance of the iran nuclear deal. iran getting a lot of pressure from its allies, particularly in europe, saying, this is the one thing standing in the way of iran being able to advance in its nuclear program. important to point out, the administration as said iran is in compliance with this deal. but they believe iran has violated the spirit of the deal. so i anticipate you will hear president trump talk about that. he's also going to talk about the other ways in which the administration wants to get tougher on iran in terms of its support for terrorists and its ballistic missile tests. so i think you're going to hear the president really unveil a broad-based strategy, a new approach toward dealing with

iran. but at the same time, andrea, again, walking a very fine line. >> as you've also been reporting, the president took major steps not only yesterday but overnight to, by executive order, undo a lot of obamacare by attacking the subsidies that help pay for the low-cost insurance, and according to critics, that will spread the costs up and down the insurance market. >> reporter: right. let's first talk about that move overnight. the administration announcing late last night that it is going to scrap those subsidies known as csrs, essentially arguing that they're illegal. but some health experts warn that these are the very subsidies that provide coverage and more cost for low-income americans. so the concern is, if you talk to some experts, that ultimately it will disrupt the market and drive up premiums. now, of course this comes on the heels of president trump yesterday signing an executive order that will allow some individuals and small businesses

to buy health care plans across state lines and in bulk. the president saying, look, this will give insurers and customers more flexibility. but again, the criticism, andrea, is that it will provide less coverage, that these will be skimpier plans that won't cover things like maternity care and some preexisting conditions. so these are controversial moves, but again, the president making the case that this fits into his campaign vow to really unravel a lot of what former president obama put into place. and of course he ran on a promise to repeal and replace obamacare. congress didn't act. they made a number of attempts to do that. they weren't able to get it done, so this is the president's way of saying he's taking the matter into his own hands, andrea. >> let me just share, kristen, while you're there. as you saw, 5:45 this morning from the president, a tweet. the democrats obamacare is imploding. massive subsidy payments to

their pet insurance company has stopped. dems should call me to fix. thank you, kristen, for being all over all subjects. he served in the obama administration as well as for the white house coordinator in the gulf region and he joins me now. taking a step back as a foreign policy observer, what is the impact here? since he is taking a middle course, the president, he's not ripping up the deal as he had promised on the campaign trail. is this actually less bad than you, who helped craft the deal, would think? >> in one way it's a middle course and it's certainly less bad than tearing up the deal. he made a promise during the campaign to dismantle it, which i think would immediately upset the united states and give up its nuclear program. from that standard, it's not as

bad. i wouldn't be so relaxed about it, because it's also very risky. >> what are the risks? >> the risks are that by punting this to congress, which may not be able to resist doing things bypassing new sanctions, or reimposing the sanctions that were lifted to get the deal, the deal could quickly unravel. the problem is the deal is actually working. even the administration itself, you heard in this report, will attest to the fact -- they won't certify that it's international security interests, but they will certify that it's blocking iran from making a nuclear weapon. punting to congress, congress takes a step that all the key players in this disagree with, giving iran a pretext to resume that nuclear program. then the question becomes, what do we do then? it's unnecessary and it's also risky. if we're lucky, nothing happens. president trump gets to say, i'm consistent in what i've been saying. it's a terrible deal and i'm not certifying it.

then congress find a way to impose those sanctions and that's okay. but there's the chance it doesn't end in that middle ground and then the question back to the administration is, okay, what are you going to do then? >> that very point. if congress does absolutely nothing, doesn't remove the 90-day period where he has to keep certifying and it obviously sticks in his craw every 90 days to have to deal with this. if congress does nothing and doesn't take the tougher actions and there's no way iran is going to negotiate a tougher deal like everybody else is agreeing to. 90 days from now, the president says, i've had it. i'm not doing this compromise again. let's just break out. >> that's possible. what is interesting, andrea, is he's had eight months to do just that, and one way or another, he's found a way not to. he said he would dismantle it and he's stuck to the deal.

>> each time getting angrier at his secretary of state, so far not his defense secretary. >> so far, and that's why we should be worried at some point he'll blow it up. again, every time he had a chance to blow tuit up, includi last time, he could have ended this deal. in less than an hour, if it really wasn't, as he's about to say, in the national security interest of the united states, he could end it. every time he's had a chance to do that, he's found a reason not to. so this move, as well as to find a way to show he's tough on the deal, he doesn't have an answer to what he's going to do if this deal doesn't take place. >> what about the criticism of john kerry, linda sherman, you were adviser in the white house. i was covering all of this as

negotiations were taking place. he didn't raise the issue of human rights activists. an initial deal because that's all iran was willing to negotiate about. >> constraints are on the region, stops them from developing ballistic missiles, improves their human rights practice. of course we would like to do that. the problem is making that a pre-condition of the deal would have ensured you got neither of that nor the constraints on nuclear weapons. the nuclear weapons was the most urgent issue and the most important issue, and it was one we could rally the international community to join us in putting on the sanctions necessary to get iran to come to the table. iran never came to the table when we had unilateral sanctions, they got the world together. the world was willing to do that on the nuclear issue. we never could have gotten a

wal. if we now turn and pivot this deal into one where iran only gets the benefits if they want, if we do everything we want, i think we have neither constraint on those nor the nuclear deal. >> if we were to try to extend the deal so it goes beyond the 10 and 15 years. parts of it are permanent. they can get subterfuge again. they can start working on this in the next 10 to 15 years. is it iraneye in our interest t make that happen with our allies? >> as soon as the constraints start to lift, some are 15, some are 20, some are 25, some are indefinite, but the subterfuge ends usually after 10 years, we will benefit if there is some agreement in place to continue

to reassure us that iran is not in a position to develop nuclear weapons. that's a legitimate conversation and one that we can have. what we shouldn't do is after the two-year algs, the counsel just immediately decides, okay, they need to abide by this longer than negotiated. the chance for doing that is really nil. >> let me ask you about something that came up not am your particular brief but when you were at the nfc. kaitlyn coleman. he had a prior relationship with someone in guantanamo, fearful he would be arrested if he was on a u.s. military plane. what do we know about the conditions? we're hearing from this feared

taliban network. >> even the united states is describing this at times as a release and the pakistanis are describing it as a rescue, and those are two different things. if it a 's a release, what are terms and what was potentially given? >> they were demanding money and other things. >> right, and it's unlikely they changed their minds and decided to be helpful. if it was a release, that raises the question of bird dog and all that. if it was a rescue, that may be more straightforward and straight up and could come in the context of the threats the president made back in pakistan if it was not helpful. they could have heard that and are responding appropriately. >> you mentioned bergdahl was in the same group. >> there was a big controversy whether the united states has seen prisoners in exchange. president obama was critical of that, so if there was some

release, there would need to be questions answered about that. prognosis. action to remove obamacare. stay with us. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. had an accident with a vehicle, i actually called usaa before we called the police. usaa was there hands-on very quick very prompt. i feel like we're being handled as people that actually have a genuine need. we're the webber family and we are usaa members for life. usaa, get your insurance quote today.

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that was a very big step yesterday. another big step was taken the day before yesterday, and one by one it's going to come down and

we're going to have great health care in our country. we are going to have great health care in our country. we're taking a little different route than we had hoped because getting congress, they forgot what their pledges were. >> president trump touting his move to scrap critical subsidies to health insurance companies overnight, bypassing congress, signing an executive order to move forward on a long promised plan to repeal and replace obamacare. joining me now is nbc's kasie hunt, host of the new show "kcdc" premiering here on sunday. and bill hart. let's talk about health care. this is right in your ballpark and what is happening on capitol hill. >> this is something republicans didn't want the president to do. they are very worried, even though it's a little bit difficult for them to say publicly about the state of the

sh individual insurance market, and they're all hearing from their governors. a couple months ago, senator john thune was saying, hey, i don't think the president should yank these payments. the chairman of the health committee was trying to figure out a bipartisan fix. it looks like this is yet another example of the president trying to put out the squeeze not only on democrats and congress, but on his own party. >> on the one hand, there is a legitimate argument this is an overreach of executive authority, and the congress, if they wanted to authorize these payments should have done so. the trump administration shouldn't just be doing it unilaterally. since president obama is doidid unilaterally, president trump is doing it unilaterally. if they think they should be in some form of these payments a little different than president obama did it, why don't they pass something? they're so intimidated by leadership and by the administration on the republican side and maybe on the democratic

side a little bit, too, they don't want to work together. if there is a bipartisan consensus to do something, congress can overrule the president. >> but this is the case where instead of going hell-bent on repealing and replacing, all along, both last year and this, they should have been working on fixes, fixes to these specific issues. now, kacie, you talked with the speaker of the house for your new show coming up, and i want to go to some of what you talked about, about his relationship with this president. >> reporter: since the president was elected, you made it known to him you didn't want him to tweet, but you defended his actions by saying, he's new to this, he'll get used to it, you didn't go after him by name after charlottesville. but you said in the wake of the "access hollywood" tape that was released that you won't go after donald trump now or in the

future. the republicans say they don't necessarily recognize the republican party under trump and they're disappointed in you. >> all i can do is pass an agenda that improves people's lives. we have an agenda we agree on. i think it's really important we make this unified government work. imagine if we just decided to have internal food fighting, how does that help people get a job? how does that help people get more take-home pay? how does that help anybody who is living paycheck to paycheck? it doesn't. >> it was a fascinating exchange, but he's trying to pick up the slack in some ways, not legislatively, but symbolically. he's going to puerto rico today. let's share what the president tweeted at 5:45 this morning. the wonderful people of puerto rico, with their unmatched spirit, know how bad things were taken before the hurricanes. i will always be with them. making up for what he's been saying and tweeting in the last couple days. >> indeed, and there are a lot of mixed messages coming from

republicans across the board, whether it's the president, the vice president, leading agencies. even speaker paul ryan said yesterday and would say today, this is about a humanitarian crisis. it still is. this is basically step 1 of the disaster recovery and there is so much to go on the infrastructure. but there are a lot of conservative republicans who, to a certain extent, lays some of the blame of this at the feet of the debt crisis that existed in puerto rico already. i think that language is certainly not being well received by people in puerto rico. >> these are american citizens, bill. >> republicans on the hill can't control what donald trump tweets or even what he says, to somm s extent. he said, i took the reported amount of money to puerto rico. congress needs to stop worrying that they can't control what the

president says or tweets, or that occasionally piping up when he says something really outrageous. they can do things. it got back to the health dare thing. a lot of people who like obamacare will criticize, or even those who do not like obamacare, they'll criticize what the president did late last night when they took away the subsidies, but they're watching. paul ryan knows how these things work. >> in terms of iran, do you think congress will be able to pass, corker or cochran, some sort of fix that will make the president happy but maybe arouse the rest of the world? >> i think you can see this actually working out well in terms of toughening the deal and getting the parts of what we care about on board. but it will require diplomacy and delegacy, which has not been

a strength of the president thus far. >> to say the least. >> "kcdc" is 7:00 to 9:00 each sunday right here on msnbc. because we don't work her hard enough. california burning. the wildfires becoming the deadliest in state history. no winds in sight. the wind is picking up. you're watching "andrea mitchell reports" on msnbc. give up, skeletor! you're finished! curse you, he-man, you interfering imbecile! give us one good reason we shouldn't vanquish you to another dimension! ok, guys, hear me out. switching to geico could save you... hundreds on car insurance. huh, he does make a point... i do like to save money...

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in california those devastating wildfires are now the deadliest outbreak of fires in california history. at least 31 people have been killed. officials fear that number could rise as they search through the ashes. now firefighters are bracing for dangerous weather conditions that could make the situation even worse. nbc's steve patterson joins me now from glen ellen in sonoma county, california. it's so gray, smoky out there in broad daylight. steve, what are the winds? what are the conditions? >> reporter: it's absolutely awful to be here, andrea. i'm not going to lie to you. the air, you can feel it in your

lungs. my throat hurts. i'm wearing a mask in between talking to you just because of the way the air feels. the winds have died down for now, but with fresh red flag warnings, firefighters are worried about what this weekend could bringing, if this wind could fuel possibly the fires that have died down a little bit or if they could spark fresh fires. you see what happens in these communities where the fire has ripped through. take a look at this. tht gl this is glen ellen. it's a small community here. this damage is not everywhere, but where it is, it's absolutely devastating. there is a deer in the background. i don't know if my camera guy can see that back there, but we've seen so many signs of wildlife in the background pushed out because the fire has charred everything around it, so what little remnants remain, it's almost like a diorama of rubble. there was a volunteer firefighter. her name was kristen johnson and

she lived right back here. when she heard about the fire, she heard it was in the area, she made sure her three-year-old son was safe and she made sure her husband was safe. she went home, she got them out of this area as quickly as possible, and she started saving the homes of other people, doing her job right away. we spoke to her yesterday about what she did and why she did it. i want you to listen to this. >> i had a porch that came right here into my kitchen and then it was a little two-bedroom, two-bath place. it wasn't much but it's been my home for a long time and i love it. getting my family out was the most important thing. we grabbed what we could, packed it in that car, then i went to work at the fire station because that's where i was needed. this is my house. this is my home. this is my everything. and now i got to figure out where to go from here. but so do a lot of other people. >> reporter: how dedicated people are in this area. that is a volunteer firefighter,

someone who has another job, comes from her other job, gets acti activated and goes out and helps with the fires after her own home burned to the ground. we visited a shelter yesterday where people are sort of bonding together, sharing their stories and somehow getting through this with the knowledge that there is this amount of devastation in their own community, andrea. >> steve, i am just so moved by that. she said, this is my house, this is my home, this was my everything. i just can't even imagine facing that kind of loss and doing what she did. it's truly heroic and it really -- >> reporter: truly heroic. >> it's incredible. thank you for bringing it to us. coming up here, nuclear reaction. how are america's allies responding to the president's decision to decertify the iran deal? that's next.

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four-star navy admiral james devrites. admiral, thank you very much for being with us. first of all, was the deal a good deal in the first place? >> it was not a perfect deal, but andrea, we should stop having a conversation about good deal or bad deal. it's a done deal. our allies are signed up to it, and it's the reality on the ground in the milddle east. so trying to walk away from it now just does not make sense, and particularly the way the president is going about it which is, effectively, toss the keys to the car to the congress and to shift metaphors slightly, give them a jump ball. you really don't want to do that as the executive branch and the president. you're supposed to be directing foreign policy, not turning it over to 400-plus people down pennsylvania avenue. this is not going to play well domestically, nor will it play

well internationally for us. >> as we see, the president's remarks were just put on the podium there in the diplomatic reception room downstairs in the white house facing to the south grounds. his aides are there, photographers are in the room, so any moment this will happen. how will our allies interpret this sort of halfway in, halfway out approach that his national security adviser has crafted where he does not withdraw but he says iran is not complying with the spirit of the deal and congress should take action and impose new non-nuclear sanctions? >> our allies are going to hate it, and even our opponents are going to hate it. how often do you find an issue upon which vladimir putin and theresa may find themselves in agreement, which is we ought to stick to the current agreement we have with iran? i don't want to be a proponent for them, they're doing many

things with our sunni allies, but we need to craft a deal to stay with iran. let's deal with iran on the other issues: ballistic missiles, their work on funding terrorism. pulling out of this agreement doesn't get us anywhere, especially the way the president will articulate in a moment, andrea. >> and he's going to say the iranian revolutionary guard, which is part of the government, which is both an economic and political force for hard liners, he's going to say they support terrorism around the world. no question about that, hezbollah, we see that whar doing in syria rpgs yemen and iraq, but he's not going to say so far as, except that at the cabinet meeting this week in tehran, it united president ro

hahn i who is more. he was defending them so he's brought about the political structure. >> just as the situation is creating a very strange sense of agreement across the international spectrum, it's doing the same thing domestically as in uniting the entire country against the way the united states is acting. so this doesn't help us. and they're going to continue to press yemen, syria, iraq. they're going to continue to influence our allies and partners, and above all, they'll undermine israel, our greatest ally in the region. so we have to confront them. but breaking up the coalition against them, which is what this pulling out of the agreement or

not process will do is not the right move at this time in my view. >> admiral, thank you very much. thanks for being with us today. and continuing now with our panel, rick stengel, public affairs, and chief correspondent for the "new york times," peter baker. also an nbc political analyst and "washington post" correspondent, ann gearan, as well as nbc reporter kristen welker. you were involved with the team that negotiated this agreement. how is this viewed by those who authored it? is there a way to toughen it, to renegotiate it, to extend it? >> i've been trying to think of a good metaphor for why the negotiations happened the way it did, because people say, why didn't you deal with iran's terrorist maneuvering on the world stage? andrea, if you go home and you see that your house is on fire, do you run in and fix the refrigerator because it's not working? what we saw is that iran was a

nuclear threshold state and a terrorist state, and the idea was this was the most urgent and important thing to get nuclear weapons out of their hands, to never let them create nuclear weapons, because of all the mystery they made around the world. you could not do both and that's why they were separate. the other thing that comes up all the time is the sunset provisions. every nuclear deal, going back to the s.t.a.r.t. treaty, has sunset provisions. you continue to negotiate five years hence, ten years hence, but the whole point is this is actually a good deal, and i know the admiral wouldn't say that. but ats goit is a good deal and looks awful for us to walk away from it in many different ways. >> the president was so angry in july when he had to decertify, reluctantly. that was profound from all of

our reporting, from the secretary of state. now he's not recertifying, but if congress doesn't react, he's going to face this same problem 90 days from now. he'll want to create a new resolution that would take away that 90-day clock. you know, he's basically trying to rethread a neeldle here. he wanted to decertify and throw out the deal. james mattis said privately, others said it publicly, that it needs to stay in place. he gets to say to the world, say to his supporters, i get to disavow this deal even if it's not going a bay -- so this is

about making a statement. >> they've really been taken out of this process after the last go-round in july. the president basically said to his white house national security adviser, you take this on and you come up with some kind of compromise. >> yes, although i thought it was very interesting that it was secretary of state tillerson who provided the most detailed account of what the president is going to do in the briefing for reporters last night, which they put on the record. the national security adviser, who has led the process among agencies and led the process in talking to the hill about how this would go procedurally was also present, but it was secretary of state tillerson who really explained the theory behind this and signed up to it himself. we know secretary tillerson said

the deal needs to be preserved even if he understood the president's level of frustration. and he explained last night how exactly that worked, that they would preserve the deal, and he said, you know, he thinks maybe the president doesn't have a great deal of confidence that they can thread this needle, to use peter's phrase, but that they're willing to try. and that's what the president is going to lay out today is a way to try to keep the deal in place but address his concerns. >> and kristen welker, it's so apparent in public at the armed services committee the defense secretary was asked by senator angus king from maine whether or not this iran deal is in the national security interest. and this is what he had to say recently. >> i do believe it's in our national security interests at the present time to remain in the jopa. that's a yes or no question. >> yes, senator, i do. >> so that's the defense

secretary making it very clear he and the chairman of the joint chiefs, joe dunford, said that day. and he also said iran is complying with the strict terms of the nuclear deal. kristen? >> that's right, and you have this divide within the administration. the president makes the case that iran has violated the spirit of the agreement, even though, as you point out, andrea, the administration also says they are in compliance with the deal. this is a key campaign promise and this is a way for the president to effectively send the message that he is trying to follow through with that campaign promise, even though he is threading a needle, as ann was just mapping out. i think you'll hear him make a number of points today not just about the iran nuclear agreement but about iran more broadly, its ballistic missile program, its activities in syria, the fact

that it has taken such a tough tone toward israel. those are all of the things that have riles this administration, and of course it's support for terrorists. i think the president will make the case that it paves the way for iran. this is president trump really reversing course from his predecessor's legacy. he announced he's pulling out of all these ttp and making changes to health care that he's doing unilaterally. this is part of sort of his broader goal that he set out to do, which he said he would do on the campaign trail, which was reverse a whole host of policies that were put forth by president obama, andrea. >> to say nothing of nafta which had support of all other previous presidents in both parties. kristen, i wanted to share a little exchange of you about

john kelly when you asked him about what makes his job tougher. let's watch. >> reporter: do his tweets make your job more difficult, general kelly? >> no. the job of the chief of staff is to staff the president, give him the best advice or go get the best advice i can give him, help him consume advice, help him work through the decision-making process in an informed way, but that's my job. and that's what i do. >> kelly's debut, just from an observer standpoint, kristen, and then i want to ask peter baker and ann about this, was pretty stellar, i thought, in the way he handled coming out and acknowledging all the reports, that he might be frustrated and angry, even joking about his facial expressions. the man should not play poker.

kristen? >> he was very strong, i thought, andrea. he came out and addressed those reports head on. he said, look, there's nothing to them. i'm not resigning. the president has no plans to fire me. as you point out, joked about those fires he was caught on camera thinking. he also shed new light on what he sees in his role, andrea. he said, look, i'm not here to change president trump, that's not my role as chief of staff. i'm here to make sure he gets the best information possible so he can make the best decisions possible. i thought it was incredibly revealing and stunning that he came out. he's kept a very low profile. this is the first time he's come out and addressed reporters. right during that period -- or

three days after he had certified again reluctantly and anger angerly, i think you were in the oval office with your colleagues, glen tlush and markey haber man. and when he had that angry expressi expression. >> it was. it's hard to believe that was three months ago and longer. some things that happened this week i can't believe happened this week. but you're right, he's still new in this job. he's never been in politics, never been at a high level in the military, so this is all new to him. he thought, as all people thought, that he's a businessman and can determine the way things work.

it's not so simple. whether it be on health care, the iran deal, on a lot of these different issues, he discovered that washington is a system, not a place, and if the system resists presidents who want to change it. that frustrated president obama, too. to see now president trump saying i'm kind of down on this whole congress thing, so i'm going to try to use my own power to affect change as best i can. something we heard from the last president. >> and rick stengel, you've been around this town, a journalist, before that an author. we're seeing not only an explosion of leaks, and conflicts between different cabinet members, you seeing going all the way back to ronald reagan, but now between president and cabinet members. >> we've seen men who work fog the president to go and have a press conference saying they're not quitting and not leaving and the president's not a moron.

that's pretty much unprecedented. and the fact that he -- his over behavior puts his subordinates in a situation he has to defend, whether in business or in washington. >> and anne gearan, the reaction around the world already we're seeing the way iran is reacting, our allies, are just united against this. theresa may arguing with the president just earlier this week. >> well, i mean, to a degree the allies who want to preserve the deal have -- can claim a partial victory here. it was really one of the -- they were among the most instrumental forces in persuading trump through his aides that the deal itself could be preserved and the potential benefits to the united states along with it, while he would still be able to express his profound

disagreement with elements of the deal and iran's behavior writ large. that's what he's going to do today. theresa may was lobbying him hard. it was the third such phone call he had. boris johnson made the same argument in a phone call with rex tillerson. spoke with the iranians immediately thereafter and put out a toughly recorded statement that made it clear the united kingdom would not follow the united states out the door should trump break the deal. you know, our very closest ally, one of our most important allies, sort of our chief diplomatic partner essentially says put up or shut up that way. it makes it pretty difficult for the president to go the other way without some explanation. so, the allies have a bit of a victory here. it's certainly not a complete one because the long-term future

of the deal was put in doubt by what the president will do today. >> i'm really struck, anne. joining us from lon cdon is kei simmons. one thing told by rex tillerson in new york at the u.n. meetings is when theresa mehmet with the president and she -- she was told he's decided what to do, and here's the president. we'll take this on the other side. ko keir, if you hang in with us. >> thank you very much. my fellow americans, as president of the united states my highest obligation is to ensure the safety and security of the american people. history has shown that the longer we ignore a threat, the more dangerous that threat becomes. for this reason, upon taking office, i've ordered a complete strategic review of our policy

toward the rogue regime in iran. that review is now complete. today i'm announcing our strategy, along with several major steps we are taking to confront the a riranian regime' hostile action and make sure, and i mean never a quirs a nuclear weapon. policy is based on a clear-eyed assessment of the iranian dictatorship, it's sponsorship of terrorism and it's continuing aggression in the middle east and all around the world. iran is under the control of a fanatical regime that seized power in 1949 and forced a proud people to submit to its extremist rule. this radical regime has raided

the wealth of one of the world's oldest and most vibrant nations and spread death, destruction and chaos all around the globe. beginning in 1979, agents of the iranian regime illegally seized the u.s. embassy in tehran and held more than 60 americans hostage during the 444 days of the crisis. the iranian-backed terrorist group hezbollah twice bombed our embassy in lebanon. once in 1983 and again in 1984. another iranian-supported bombing killed 241 americans, service members they were, in their barracks in beirut in

1983. in 1996, the regime directed another bombing of american military housing in saudi arabia murdering 19 americans in cold blood. iranian proxies provided training to operatives who were later involved in al qaeda's bombing of the american embassies in kenya, tanzania and two years later killing 224 people and wounding more than 4,000 others. the regime harbored high-level terrorists in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, including osama bin laden's son. in iraq and afghanistan, groups supported by iran have killed hundreds of american military personn personnel. the iranian dictatorship's

aggression continues to this day. the regime remains the world's leading state sponsor of terrorism and provides assistance to al qaeda, the taliban, hezbollah, hamas, and other terrorist networks. it develops, deploys and proliferates missiles that threaten american troops and our allies. it harasses american ships and threatens freedom of navigation in the arabian gulf and in the red sea. it imprisons americans on false charges and it launches cyber attacks against our critical infrastructure, financial system and military. the united states is far from the only target of the iranian dictatorship's long campaign of

blo bloodshed. the regime violently suppresses its own citizens. it shot unarm student protesters in the street during the green revelation. this regime has fueled sectarian violence in iraq and vicious sifl wars in yemen and syria. in syria, the iranian regime has supported the atrocities of bashar al assad's regime. and condoned assad's use of chemical weapons against helpless civilians, including many, many children. given the regime's murderous past and present, we should not take lightly its sinister vision for the future. the regime's two favorite chants are "death to america" and "death to israel," realizing the gravity of the situation, the

united states and the united nations security council sought over many years to stop iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons with a wide array of strong economic sanctions. but the previous administration lifted these sanctions just before what would have been the total collapse of the iranian regime. through the deeply controversial 2015 nuclear deal with iran. this deal is known as the joint comprehensive plan of action, or jcpoa. as i have said many times, the iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the united states has ever entered into. the same mind set that produced this deal is responsible for years of terrible trade deals that have sacrificed so many

millions of jobs in our country to the benefit of other countries. we need negotiators who will much more strongly represent america's interests. the nuclear deal through iran's dictatorship, a political and economic life line, providing urgently needed relief from the intense domestic pressure the sanctions had created. it also gaift regime an immediate financial boost. and over $100 billion its government could use to fund terrorism. the regime also received a massive cash settlement of $1.7 billion from the united states. a large portion of which was physically loaded onto an airplane and flown into iran.