WASHINGTON — The White House confirmed Monday that a sweeping Iran deal had been canceled by presidential order. The agreement, announced just one day earlier, was withdrawn after phone calls from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Republican senators who called the pact catastrophic.
Dementia Don, who had celebrated the agreement on Sunday, told reporters the matter was now "totally up to me." He added that any future news would "only be good news."
The proposed deal would have sent approximately $25 billion to Iran and left the Strait of Hormuz under Iranian control. It also deferred nuclear negotiations to an unspecified later date. By Monday morning, those terms were no longer operative.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt confirmed the president personally canceled the deal. "The president determined that a commitment of this magnitude should not proceed without his explicit, ongoing approval," Leavitt said. She described the initial announcement as "a useful starting point" and stressed that no one else was authorized to conclude international agreements. Asked about Congress's constitutional role in treaty ratification, Leavitt said the White House was reviewing its options.
Netanyahu had posted on social media that Iran would never have a nuclear weapon and revealed he had spoken directly with the former president. Republican senators Lindsey Graham, Ted Cruz, and Roger Wicker then urged the president to abandon the deal. Wicker called it "a disastrous deal" and insisted the United States must "finish what we started."
The about-face was cheered by several Republican defense hawks. Senator Wicker said the United States had "unfinished business" in the region. A spokesman for Senator Graham added that the president’s earlier announcement had been "helpful in clarifying what not to do."
The president had previously promised to end the war in Ukraine within twenty-four hours of his election. That deadline has lapsed by nearly two years.
It was unclear which external communication had caused the reversal. Both Israeli officials and Republican leaders claimed credit before the president addressed the matter. In a brief interview with ABC News, the president said he could not discuss details, repeated that it was "totally up to me," and then left for a meeting on national security concerns linked to the White House ballroom. The ballroom’s security needs, the president had earlier told lawmakers, were vital enough to merit separate emergency funding, though he declined to elaborate further.
The State Department confirmed it held no copies of the agreement. A senior official said the text existed only on a single White House notepad last seen on the Resolute Desk. An Oval Office aide later reported the president had drawn a large X over the document in Sharpie and filed it in a drawer marked "Done."
