Barack Obama Claims Trump’s Iran Agreement May Have Left The US ‘Worse Off’ Than Before The War

Former President Barack Obama claimed Friday that the U.S. may be “worse off” now than before President Donald Trump began striking Iran.

Obama made the remark on NBC’s Today Show, after host Craig Melvin mentioned there was a section of the new Obama Presidential Center “dedicated to his work on the Iran nuclear deal,” known as the JPCOA, which went into effect in 2016.

Trump scrapped the deal in favor of his 14-point Memorandum of Understanding with Iran that called for a 60-day ceasefire, reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, and $300 billion in reparation money, among other provisions.

“What do you make of what we know about the deal so far?” Melvin asked.

“I am very happy to see a ceasefire, and I’m hopeful that it holds, but in terms of what was the original rationale for this war which was — there was a deal in place in which Iran had agreed not to develop nuclear weapons,” Obama said. “This administration — or a prior version of this administration — pulled out of it, which caused then Iran to develop more nuclear capacity. We’ve now fought a war, spent billions and billions of dollars, you know, put enormous strain on our military, a lot of people have died, and it feels like we’re back where we were before we started the war except maybe a little bit worse off.”

Trump has lashed out at “fools” who have called the MOU a bad deal for the U.S.

He wrote on Truth Social this week, “These fools, who think I haven’t been tough enough on Iran, when the Stock Market Just Hit A RECORD HIGH, and Oil prices are ‘tumbling’ down, are either jealous, bad people, or stupid. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!!! President DJT.”

Trump spoke about his reasoning for signing the MOU at the G7 summit in France, saying, “So the one thing I didn’t want to see is — I didn’t want to see economic catastrophe. If you kept this going, that could have happened. But all I know is, every time we talked about the possibility of peace, the stock market shot up like a rocket ship.”

Watch the video above via NBC News’s The Today Show.

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