As the Middle East teeters on the brink, Trump could be forced into war with Iran
US president Donald Trump faces a make or break moment in his long-running confrontation with Iran. The UN's nuclear watchdog has just reached the damning conclusion that Iran is in breach of its non-proliferation agreement for the first time in 20 years.
Trump has been personally responsible, in recent years, for the significant rise in tensions in Washington's decades-old feud with the ayatollahs. Having taken the decision in 2018 to end American participation in the Iranian nuclear deal, negotiated by former president Barack Obama, Trump has invested a great deal of political capital in his second term in an effort to resolve the issue once and for all.
Trump's offer to reopen talks with Tehran, made in a personal letter sent to Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei shortly after the president returned to the White House this year, held out the prospect of lifting the punitive sanctions imposed against Tehran during his first term in office. This would be in return for Iran curbing her nuclear ambitions.
There were even suggestions that Trump, following several rounds of talks between American and Iranian officials in the Gulf state of Oman (another session is due to take place in Muscat on Sunday), might be prepared to agree a 'soft' deal with Tehran.
This would allow Iran to continue work on its nuclear programme on condition that tight safeguards were in place to prevent the production of nuclear warheads. Such an outcome would bear little difference to the deal Obama negotiated in 2015, and would be sure to cause outrage in Israel, where prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu insists that only the complete dismantling of Iran's nuclear programme would be acceptable.
Trump's hopes of achieving a breakthrough, though, now appear to have been torpedoed by the alarming evidence produced by the latest report published by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body responsible for monitoring Iran's nuclear activities.
Apart from confirming the existence of three previously undisclosed nuclear sites in Iran, it says that unexplained traces of nuclear material have been found at these and another site. This suggests Tehran's nuclear activities are far from peaceful.
The report has prompted the IAEA's 35-member Board of Governors (which includes the UK) meeting in Vienna this week that Iran has broken its non-proliferation agreement for the first time in 20 years, and to demand that Iran provide answers 'without delay' in the IAEA's long-running investigation into uranium traces found at several locations that Tehran has failed to declare as nuclear sites.
In response to the ruling, the Islamic Republic said it had no choice but to respond by establishing a new enrichment facility in a 'secure location'.
Suddenly, Trump's hopes of achieving a peaceful resolution of the Iran issue lie in tatters, with fears that the IAEA's uncompromising condemnation of Tehran's conduct could ultimately provoke a regional war.
Western security officials have expressed concern that Israel is preparing to launch unilateral military action to nullify Iran's nuclear facilities, while Washington has responded to the deepening crisis by ordering the removal of non-essential staff from the US Embassy in Baghdad. Other diplomatic and military missions in the region have been ordered to undertake urgent risk assessments of the vulnerability to possible Iranian attacks.
The latest Iran crisis certainly means the US leader, whose natural instinct is to avoid military action, is in a difficult dilemma. Having made clear that he is totally opposed to the ayatollahs developing nuclear weapons, Trump cannot ignore the clear-cut evidence that Iran is in breach of its nuclear obligations.
Indeed, there were already indications that Trump was losing patience with Tehran prior to the IAEA's demarche. The president told a US podcast on Wednesday he was 'less confident' about the prospects of a deal, and accused Tehran of adopting a hardline position during the recent negotiations in Oman.
By the same token, Trump has little appetite for engaging in military action unless there is absolutely no alternative, an attitude that the Iranians have no doubt taken on board in their approach to the latest round of nuclear talks.
Even if Trump is unwilling to hold Tehran to account for its constant defiance of the IAEA, there are others, especially the Israelis, who are. So the American president could soon find himself involved in a direct confrontation with Iran, whether he likes it or not.
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