Trump trying to provoke Iran into violating the nuclear agreement

American officials have already told allies they should be prepared to join in reopening negotiations with Iran or expect that the United States may abandon the agreement, as it did the Paris climate accord. And according to several foreign officials, the United States has begun raising with international inspectors in Vienna the possibility of demanding access to military sites in Iran where there is reasonable suspicion of nuclear research or development.

If the Iranians balk, as seems likely, their refusal could enable Washington to declare Tehran in violation of the two-year-old deal.

Mr. Trump has enormous latitude to abandon the accord. It was never a treaty because President Barack Obama knew that opposition to the agreement in the Republican-dominated Senate was so great that he could never get the two-thirds majority needed for ratification. Instead, he made an executive agreement, one that his successor could eliminate by merely disregarding the accord’s requirement to waive sanctions against Iran.

Mr. Trump’s instructions followed a sharp series of exchanges last week with Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson, after Mr. Trump initially balked at certifying, for a second time since he took office, that Iran is in compliance with the agreement. He later reluctantly approved the certification.

Mr. Trump had expected to be presented with options for how to get out of the deal, according to two officials, and in the words of one of them, “he had a bit of a meltdown when that wasn’t one of the choices.”

Mr. Trump himself made it clear he does not plan to let that happen again.

“We’re doing very detailed studies,” he told The Wall Street Journal in an interview this week. Later, he added that when the next 90-day review of the deal comes around — mandated by Congress two years ago — “I think they’ll be noncompliant.”

His aides say they are not so sure of the outcome, and they described the studies Mr. Trump referred to as evenhanded efforts to evaluate the costs and benefits of staying inside the deal — with its sharp limitations on Iran’s ability to produce nuclear fuel for at least the next nine years — versus abandoning it.

Some concede that the diplomatic cost of abandoning the agreement would be high. The other parties to the agreement — Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia — do not share Mr. Trump’s objections. If the United States withdraws support for the accord, it will be isolated on the issue, much as it is on the climate change agreement…….https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/27/world/middleeast/trump-iran-nuclear-agreement.html