Inside the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal that Trump withdrew from

President Donald Trump on Friday defended the continued lack of a war-ending deal with Iran by once again trashing the prior nuclear agreement brokered by Barack Obama, his predecessor and longtime political foe.

“They’ve dealt with very weak and ineffective leadership on behalf of the United States” and others “that allowed them to get away with murder,” Trump said of Iran in an NBC News interview.

He was asked why Iran is still holding out in negotiations if they are desperate to reach an agreement, as Trump insists that they are.

“It takes a little while … This should have been done long ago,” Trump said when pressed.

He then brought up the Obama-era nuclear deal — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA — which Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2018 and did not renegotiate.

“That deal was tantamount to giving them a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal given by Barack Obama, and really penned by him,” Trump told NBC. “It was a horrible deal.”

It was hardly the first time Trump has excoriated the JCPOA, which was reached in 2015 by an international coalition including the U.S.

“The DEAL that we are making with Iran will be FAR BETTER,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post on April 20, adding a few minutes later that such a deal will come “relatively quickly!”

It’s become a frequent refrain from Trump as the Iran war, which he initially said would last four to six weeks, stretches into its fourth month without a short-term peace deal, let alone one that solves the Iran nuclear threat.

Trump often claims had he not pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA, Iran would have already obtained and used nuclear weapons.

But many national security experts say the deal, while not perfect, succeeded in its main goals of halting Iran’s march toward proliferation and enabling effective monitoring of Tehran’s nuclear activities.

And since Trump’s withdrawal, Iran has breached the JCPOA’s nuclear limitations, including ramping up their uranium enrichment and pulling back on some of the transparency measures the deal had established.

Asked in the NBC interview why he didn’t renegotiate a better nuclear deal during his first term, Trump said, “It takes years to do these things.”

Trump also claimed to NBC that the JCPOA would have already “expired long ago.” But many of its key provisions were permanent, while others were set to last 15 or 20 years or longer.

“I find it very hard to say how we are in a better position” currently, Ernest Moniz, who was the U.S. energy secretary when the 2015 was inked, told CNBC.

“Maybe there will be a rabbit pulled out of a hat. We all hope so. But right now, the conditions would certainly appear to be far less favorable than they were a decade ago,” he said.

Here’s what to know about the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal: