If the Iran deal falls, the world would be a more dangerous place

Donald Trump’s motive for refusing to certify the Iran anti-nuclear agreement was as transparent as glass. He had already certified it twice, and nothing has changed except that his opinion-poll ratings have resumed their downward drift after September’s respite. Some of his supporters are beginning to realise he is all hat and no cattle, so he felt the need for a costless gesture.

He hasn’t started building the wall, now downgraded to the “renovation of fences”, across the US southern border. He hasn’t scrapped Obamacare – although this week he did what he could to sabotage it for some poorer Americans. So it was time to go back one of the few things he can do, which is, as David Usborne writes, pulling the US out of international agreements.

Fortunately, most of this is puff and bluster. It was the same story with President Trump’s repudiation of the Paris climate-change agreement. This was, of course, bad news because it removed the symbolic power of the US President’s bully pulpit from the complex task of implementing the deal. But it was less bad than it appeared, because President Trump was only giving the required three years’ notice of the US’s intention to withdraw – something that will not actually happen, if at all, until near the end of his term in the White House.

In the case of the Iran deal, President Trump has not ended it. Indeed, he has no authority to do so. He has sent it back to Congress, which now has 60 days to decide whether to renew it. It has no good grounds for terminating the deal. Even President Trump could say only that Iran had violated the “spirit” of the agreement secured by his predecessor, Barack Obama, in 2015.

He knows full well that the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, the body charged with monitoring the agreement, has found no violations. Of course, Iran continues to sponsor some of the most unsavoury forces in the Middle East and its anti-American rhetoric is a constant provocation, but the deal is intended to curtail its ambition to acquire nuclear weapons and there is nothing to suggest it is not working.

That is why President Trump was urged by all interested parties, including the UK Government, not to decertify the agreement, but all that has done is to turbo-charge the boost he gains from his electoral base by doing so.

Unfortunately, sending the Iran deal back to Congress may not be cost-free. Mr Obama never submitted the deal to Congress to be ratified as a treaty, knowing that the votes were not there – reflecting the history of attacks on Americans by Iran or its proxies over decades. It must be hoped that some compromise will emerge, preferably one which absolves President Trump of the obligation to certify the agreement every 90 days.

However, we should be aware that if the Iran deal falls, it is likely to be replaced by a policy of confrontation and aggressive rhetoric similar to that applied by President Trump to North Korea. That would be a worrying outcome for the world. Let us hope that calm voices in Congress prevail.