Trump’s Iran stunt

President Trump approached a deadline for certifying Iran’s compliance with its 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, trapped in a tight box of his own construction. As a candidate, he railed repeatedly against the deal and promised, and promised, and promised to rip it up.

Then reality bit. His intelligence agencies, his own Joint Chiefs chairman and international inspectors all said Iran is so far living up to the letter of the deal’s obligations.

Which would mean if it chose to exit, the United States, not the Islamic Republic, would be the one breaking its word.

Meantime, Trump’s own tough-as-nails defense secretary, Jim Mattis, acknowledged that putting the paper in the shredder would damage the United States’ national security interests.

Scrapping the pact, after all, would leave America alienated from its allies, all of whom want to preserve it, and very swiftly risk turning Iran into the next North Korea — outside the international community and unrestrained in its rush to get its hands on nukes.

Turns out, making pronouncements is easy. Presidenting is hard.

And so America now has forced upon it a justunveiled, too-clever-by-half foreign policy shift. Trump Friday decried and decertified the deal Obama struck, but refused to exercise his unquestioned power to immediately pull America out of it.

Instead, remaining prisoner to his previous position, he asked to Congress to “reach a solution,” somehow strengthening the terms of the alreadydone deal without derailing it.

Which could well mean, after the House and Senate invariably fail to reach consensus on improving a pact that took 15 months and seven nations to broker, he is passive-aggressively laying the groundwork for the United States to withdraw in three months.

The President of the United States is unable to get past his cognitive dissonance. We’re not.

As an Editorial Board, we too opposed the Iran deal, and staunchly. For failing to do anything meaningful to restrain Iran’s sponsorship of international terror. For leaving that Israel-hating regime too close — as close as a year — to breaking out to develop nuclear weapons.

But a quick look at the world we’re living in now leaves no doubt that was yesterday’s fight.

It is time for intelligent foes of the deal to say, unequivocally: It is far better for the United States to abide by the terms of a flawed agreement that takes concrete steps to restrain Iran’s nuclear activity than to impulsively pull out and be left with nothing.

Especially because — this is fact, not propaganda — Iran is abiding by the terms of the 159-page agreement.

It transferred its stockpile of enriched uranium and ended all uranium enrichment. Promised to allow intrusive inspections. Accepted strong limits on its ability to reprocess spent fuel, on its holdings of uranium ore concentrates, and on centrifuge research and development.

Surely, there are important things the deal did not do. Iran was and is up to no good in the region. Arming and funding Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists. Working on missile technology.

And, in more than a decade, some serious constraints on Iran’s nuclear program will sunset.

But it is far harder for America to fix that and stop the regime’s lethal mischief-making if it shows itself unwilling or unable to stand by a deal Iran is currently honoring.

It is only by staying in, and standing united alongside our allies in the U.K., France and Germany, and perhaps China and Russia, that the United States can strengthen a coalition that can effectively discipline the mullahs’ bad behavior.

Back out now, and we’re back to square one.