Oil is sliding ahead of Trump's deadline on the Iran nuclear deal
- Oil prices slumped Tuesday but remained near their highest levels since 2014.
- Crude has been rallying ahead of an announcement by the Trump administration on whether or not the US will remain in the Iran nuclear deal.
- Follow oil pries in real time here.
Oil prices slumped Tuesday morning, but held close to multi-year highs, as the deadline for a possible US exit from the Iran nuclear deal loomed.
West Texas Intermediate was down 1.07% to $70.09 a barrel at 8:30 a.m. ET. It cracked the $70 mark for the first time since 2014 on Monday. Brent, the international benchmark, was down 0.60% to $75.71 a barrel.
President Donald Trump is set to announce the future of the Iran nuclear deal, which lifts sanctions on Tehran in exchange for curbing its nuclear program, at 2:00 p.m. ET. Trump, a longtime critic of the 2015 deal, has said he'll withdraw the US from it if other partners - mainly Britain, France, and Germany - don't "fix" its perceived flaws.
French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited Washington recently in attempts to convince Trump to continue sanction waivers. Even so, the US's closest allies still seem to be very much in the dark on what he'll decide.
"We don't know what Mr. Trump is going to announce," Maja Kocijancic, EU spokesperson for foreign affairs, said hours before the announcement, according to Bloomberg.
