Iran nuclear deal: What now after Trump's decision to pull out?

He launched a scathing assault on the deal and its deficiencies.

 

But he offered no alternative policy to put in its place. He has put US diplomacy on a collision course with some of Washington's closest allies.

 

And some fear that he may have brought a new and catastrophic regional war in the Middle East that much closer.

 

The 2015 Iran nuclear deal - or JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) to give it its technical name - is not quite dead. But it is most certainly on life support. Much now depends upon how the Iranians respond.

 

President Hassan Rouhani has been a staunch supporter of the agreement. He appears to want to try to explore with the Europeans and others the possibilities of keeping it alive.

 

But he faces strong internal opposition from hardliners, some of whom want Iran to break out not just from the JCPOA - but from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) altogether.

 

President Trump appears to have cut the ground from under his Iranian counterpart's feet.

 

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.

 

BBC