On Friday, the White House released a document outlining a new strategy for dealing with the Islamic Republic; the president also announced that he would not certify the nuclear deal by the October 15 deadline. By declining to certify, Trump has not jettisoned the agreement—known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—but simply given Congress the chance to renew sanctions. Amir Taheri comments:

[The new document] abandons the distinction that Barack Obama and John Kerry tried to make between Tehran’s backing for outright terrorist groups and its support of the so-called “militant” ones such as the Lebanese branch of Hizballah and the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood (i.e., Hamas). Without openly saying so, Obama implied that some of the “militant” groups financed and armed by Iran may not be as bad as [others] Tehran supported. President Trump rejects that illusion. . . .

[Furthermore,] the new strategy offers a broader vision of relations with Iran beyond the narrow issue of the nuclear deal, which . . . is presented as no more than a part of a larger jigsaw puzzle. The puzzle also includes “gross violations of human rights” and “the unjust detention of American citizens and other foreigners on spurious charges.” In other words, Tehran must understand that taking foreign hostages is no longer risk-free. . . .

[But President Trump] is not setting himself directly against the JCPOA as such. Instead, he points to Iran’s repeated violation of its pledges, as most recently testified to by the International Atomic Energy Agency’s director, Yukio Amano, with regard to inspection of certain military sites. Nor could Europeans ignore the fact that Iran’s testing and deploying of medium- and long-range missiles violates the terms of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which is often cited to give some legal aura to the JCPOA. . . .

Trump’s text [also] makes it hard for the leadership in Tehran to devise a strategy to counter it. Had he renounced the JCPOA in a formal way, Iran’s leaders could have cast themselves as victims of “imperialist bullying” and deployed the Europeans . . . to fight in their corner. Now they cannot do that because all that Trump is demanding is a stricter application of the measures that the EU and others say they mean to defend.

That leaves Tehran with the choice of either unilaterally denouncing the JCPOA, for example by claiming that it cannot allow unrestricted inspection of “suspect sites” in its territory, or trying to open a dialogue with the U.S. through the EU or even regional mediation.

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.