Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a special series of discussions about US politics and the Trump presidency, or as we journalists call it, the gift that keeps on giving.

I'm Freddie Gray. I'm deputy editor of the spectator. I'm joined today by Matthew Brodsky, who is a senior fellow at the Security Studies Group,

as well as Andy Basevic, who is the author of America's War for the Greater Middle East.

So, gentlemen, we had the news that, well, Donald Trump made a very firm statement

that he was withdrawing from the Iran deal, there would be a small window of time

for Iran or other powers to try and find some sort of compromise, but it was a fairly,

I think, it's fair to say, aggressive move out of the Iran deal. Matt, you think this is good

news, don't you? Can you explain why? Well, first, let me just say, I think that we need a deal that prevents Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

And that's what we were promised from 2012 until 2015 under the Obama administration.

But they promised us a Lexus and they brought back a lemon.

And so what we have is something that does not work.

And they've been not telling the truth about that to the American people for a very long time.

So I wanted to see the deal then made stronger.

And unfortunately, that hasn't been able to happen. So in the same way that you

wouldn't continue to take medicine if it's not treating the issue or the problem, there's no reason

to keep a deal in place that does not, in fact, prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons.

So we need something else.

If I understand it, Matt, the reason it isn't working is that the E3 powers, that's

Britain, Germany, and France are not checking properly on whether Iran is holding up

the side of the bargain.

Well, I mean, frankly, it would appear that what they would really want is to make

money off of conducting business with Iran, and that that's far more important than strengthening

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