Iran gets the Trump treatment

I expect Trump hopes that if he sounds as belligerent and dangerous towards Iran as he was towards Kim Jong-un, it's all going to end happily with a make-up summit somewhere nice and neutral and all will be well. That would be wildly optmistic. First, there's a long way to go with North Korea and nothing is certain, and second, Iran is a different beast. It has a serious heart of darkness that is not going to be softened by a bellicose Trump. More likely to be the opposite. Iran is embedded in malovolent activities all over the Middle East and is fast building up military strength inside Syria to threaten Israel. If Trump refuses to sign the next certification of the nuclear deal he hates and starts reimposing radical sanctions against Tehran and its regime of mischief-makers, I can see a rapid escalation of trouble ahead, with Iran throwing away the Obama deal and going headlong for a nuclear weapon. Iran signed the deal for two very good reasons - good for them that is. It opened the gates for a lifting of economic sanctions and it provided a pretty limited timetable for the agreement. Iran's uranium-enrichment programme was put on hold for only 15 years. Then what? Oh yes, Tehran was pretty pleased with that. This is why Trump hates it, and why Mike Pompeo, the soon-to-be secretary of state, also hates it. But why should Iran cooperate if Trump declares he wants the whole deal thrown around and added to and changed? Trump wants the enrichment programme suspended indefinitely. Iran is not going to play ball. They signed what they signed. As I've said before in previous blogs, I think Trump is right, the 15-year deal is ridiculously short-lived but it's going to be a helluva fight to get Iran to agree to extend the deal for eternity. And if Iran refuses, what is the world going to face? Is Trump going to use the same language he deployed against Kim Jong-un, threatening to annihilate Iran? Poor Jim Mattis, he's going to be asked for military options perhaps, when he knows and we all know that you can't start bombing Iran. The consequences would be infinitely more dangerous than if Trump had bombed North Korea. The Iranian baddies, as Trump said today, are everywhere and could inflict untold misery. Perhaps Emmanuel Macron will persuade Trump to hold fire. But my gut feeling is Trump is going to persist. He and Pompeo will do their best to develop a Nuclear Deal Part Two, with heavy restrictions on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Quds Force operations, as well as an extension to the uranium-enrichment timetable. But I fear he will get little support from his allies.