Yes, it’s unfashionable to say so, but Trump was right to kill the Iran deal

It’s time for Britain and the Europeans to stop lying to themselves: the status quo was simply not working

It was about five years ago that Iran’s expatriates finally gave up hope. Far from a transient aberration, they realised that the evil, vicious regime they loathed so much was here to stay. Until then, many members of the large Iranian communities in London or Los Angeles remained surprisingly upbeat. It was as if they were clinging to the hope that it would all be over by Christmas, or rather Nowruz, the Persian new year.

They were quick to share anecdotes from a relative “back home” about why democratic pressure was building, or to relay dubiously upbeat claims made by pundits on Us-based Farsi-language satellite TV. Yet slowly but surely, even the most Panglossian were forced to admit that real change wasn’t on the horizon. The Green movement and the 2009-2012 protests achieved nothing. The victory of the so-called reformist Hassan Rouhani was a non-event for minorities and dissidents, who continue to be persecuted. Barack Obama’s nuclear deal in 2015 merely gave the regime a spring in its step, freeing up vast amounts of cash to ramp up its destructive meddling in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen without improving ordinary Iranians’ lives. The result was the furious anti-regime demonstrations earlier this year – and they, too, were savagely put down.

Iranian society is now in such a state of ruin that it will take decades of freedom to heal. It’s not just the grossly mismanaged economy that is in the doldrums. The real crisis is social: suicides, extraordinary levels of drug addiction, a mental illness epidemic, an unhealthy obsession with plastic surgery, and youth in the grip of an extreme alienation from everything bar materialism.

But none of this matters to the regime, whose sole purpose is to survive for as long as possible and to export its ideology. Until recently, it had been playing a blinder, leveraging the West’s willingness to appease its enemies to its advantage, and using the nuclear deal to fill the post-iraq void in the Middle East. Its actions in Syria, where it supports Assad, are tantamount to aiding and abetting war crimes; its funding of Hizbollah and Hamas, and its decision to locate tens of thousands of missiles in Syria and Lebanon, mean that it is now the world’s number one terror state.

It is therefore absurd that so many “experts” in the West continue to support the nuclear deal. It probably worked on its own narrow terms, but made Iran more dangerous in every other respect. It gave up building nuclear bombs but could focus on overseas adventures and developing missiles. It is unfashionable to say so, but Donald Trump was right to tear up the deal. Appeasing expansionist, rogue states rarely works.

The fundamental problem was that the West negotiated from a position of weakness. We continue to suffer from post-iraq and Afghanistan fatigue: those wars proved culturally and politically ruinous, disproving the conceit that it is easy to impose democracy on dictatorships with no relevant history or institutions. There was (and remains) a huge appetite for almost any kind of deal that kicked the Iranian can down the road.

All of this happened in parallel with the rise of a technocratic, postnational and post-democratic ideology among Western elites, including the US State Department and the Foreign Office. A treaty, however ineffective and useless, is the perfect diplomatic tool to signal one’s virtue; a deal is always deemed better than no deal. Such people also distrust Israel, that most traditional of nation states; they felt able to disregard its objections, certain of their own superior wisdom.

Then there were the attempts by the EU to forge a common foreign and defence policy. The French and Germans were desperate for the commercial opportunities in Iran. The British wanted to be good Europeans. For Tehran’s canny negotiators, it was akin to shooting fish in a barrel.

Yet the regime, too, made severe miscalculations. It didn’t predict that the Gulf Arabs’ rapprochement with Israel would turn into something close to friendship, facilitated by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s gradual liberalisation of Saudi society.

For the first time, it isn’t just Egypt or Jordan who are at peace with Israel: the other Middle Eastern Arab nations are joining in, with the exception of those controlled by Iran. There is now a tantalising possibility of a grand Israeli-arab bargain to resolve the Palestinian question. No wonder they have united against Iran, now their sole mortal enemy. Most important of all, the Iranians didn’t predict Donald Trump’s election, and then wrongly thought he would soon crumble. They continued to overreach, and it is that which sealed the deal’s fate.

One of the mysteries is why intelligent, pro-american figures such as Boris Johnson remain wedded to the deal. Are they simply trying to placate their own officials, having calculated that they cannot fight wars on every front and that Brexit is enough? Or are they seeking to ingratiate themselves with the EU, making support for this deal part of the Brexit grand bargain? If so they risk bitter disappointment: the EU will take and give nothing in return.

The reality is that Britain’s protestations are useless. We can but watch as America flexes its muscles. The situation is far more complex than that on the Korean peninsula, but Iran will be faced with three choices.

It could keep on going as if nothing has happened, relying on the help of the EU and perhaps Russia, and clinging to the hope that sanctions won’t trigger a counter-revolution (or even a military coup). It could restart its dash to a nuclear bomb, guaranteeing a war, with a very high likelihood of the regime collapsing. Or it could stage a climbdown, North Korea-style, withdrawing from Syria and curtailing its missile programmes.

Trump’s bet is that the outcome will either be option one – and that this will encourage the Iranian public to overthrow the regime – or option three, and that Mike Pompeo will soon be flying to Tehran for talks. Trump could pull it off, or it could go catastrophically wrong. But whatever the outcome, the British and Europeans must stop lying to themselves: the status quo was not working. It was either a case of a near-certain conflict – if not this year then next – or one last shot at a better, more peaceful Iran.