With a stroke of his pen US President Donald Trump has jeopardised the one agreement – good or bad – that seeks to constrain Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

An imperfect deal that was working
Let’s be clear here what we are talking about. The Iran nuclear deal is undoubtedly controversial. Mr Trump has opposed it consistently, though often it appeared for no other logical reason than that it was the creation of his predecessor in the White House. The deal was not perfect. It did not cover a range of worrying Iranian activities from its missile programme to its regional behaviour. It covered what it covered – Iran’s sophisticated and impressive nuclear programme. It imposed a whole range of restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities and introduced a more intrusive verification regime to ensure that Iran was complying with its terms. Some of these restrictions will expire over time. At best you could say the agreement prevented Iran from getting close to a break-out point after which it might dash to get a bomb. At worst you could say that it simply delayed a potential crisis – “kicking the can down the road” as it were. Given that without the JCPOA there was a real risk of a war between Israel and Iran this might not have been such a bad thing. The inconvenient truth for Donald Trump is that, as far as it goes, the nuclear deal was working. All the other countries who signed up to the agreement believe that Iran is in full compliance with its terms. So does the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). So, too, do key members of the Trump administration itself, not least the new Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats. Despite this, Mr Trump presented the JCPOA in stark and frankly erroneous terms. He largely condemned it for leaving out things that it was never supposed to cover in the first place. So where do we go from here?Dangerous path ahead
A battle will now be under way in Tehran, and who wins out will determine if the agreement can be saved. If the so-called moderates prevail then the Europeans will have a crucial role to play. For what is at stake here is not US sanctions against Iran as such, but so-called “secondary sanctions” – that is sanctions against foreign i.e. non-US companies that may be dealing with Tehran.