Quote:As Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institiution, noted in a phone briefing with reporters, the deal isn't a treaty; it's an international political agreement. That means the U.S. voluntarily bought into it, and it doesn't necessarily mean the whole thing falls apart.

"One of the peculiarities of the agreement," Maloney told reporters, is it "does not include mechanisms for withdrawal."

Quote:The timing is awkward, coming just as North Korea needs to know whether it can trust the U.S. to keep its word ahead of a summit on denuclearization.

Quote:It was a non-answer that only served to confirm the suspicions of Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.

"He couldn't answer. He didn't explain. He doesn't have an answer to that," Maloney said. "If he's convinced the restrictions imposed were insufficient, or the monitoring of the regime was insufficient, how does the absence of these measures and restrictions provide greater security for the U.S.?"