What the commentators said

Trump’s statement on Iran may be “the most dishonest speech he has ever given from the White House”, said Fred Kaplan on Slate. It flagrantly misrepresented “what the deal was meant to do, the extent of Iran’s compliance, and the need for corrective measures”. We know that Trump hates what he calls the “worst deal ever”. But “as the inspectors have reported time and time again, Iran is not cheating” on its terms. So instead, Trump cited a series of “false or irrelevant” reasons for his decision, the main one being “that the Iranian regime is full of bad people doing bad things”. This is quite true, but could easily be used to reach the opposite conclusion: “We need the deal, one could say, to keep this violent, destabilising regime from building nuclear weapons.” This diplomatic disaster could have been much worse, said Simon Tisdall in The Observer. Trump was prevented from withdrawing altogether by his generals – chief of staff John Kelly, defence secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. Mcmaster – along with close allies such as Theresa May, who personally intervened by phone.

The effects of withdrawal would have been dire, said Kim Sengupta in The Independent. Iran, forced back into isolation, would have developed its arsenal at “full tilt”. North Korea would have decided that there “was no point in negotiations because the US could always renege in the future”. Still, the president’s unease with the deal is “widely shared” by most Republicans, by some Democrats, and across the US, said Molly Kiniry in The Sunday Telegraph. Like all President Obama’s diplomatic coups, this one put “his place in the history books before the reality of America’s foreign policy interests”. Plans are afoot in the Senate to strengthen the deal, which at present allows Iran to start enriching uranium again after 2025, by voting to re-impose sanctions automatically if Iran gets within a year of full nuclear capability. Unlike the existing agreement, this might do what it was meant to do: “stop Iran from getting the Bomb”.