Why Trump should not ditch the deal with Iran

TIME is running out for Donald Trump to make up his mind about the Iran nuclear deal of 2015. Before May 17th President Trump must decide whether to continue Barack Obama’s suspension of nuclear-related sanctions—Iran’s reward for constraining its nuclear programme. If Mr Trump does not issue a waiver, sanctions will snap back. The other signatories to the deal will see America as the aggressor. Unless Iran goes on to violate the deal flagrantly, they will not follow suit. The chances are that Iran would then slowly crank its programme up again. That would be a terrible outcome.The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), as the deal is known, has got Iran to mothball most of its uranium-enrichment centrifuges and redesign its nuclear reactor at Arak to produce much less plutonium. Before the JCPOA, Iran was just a few months away from being able to make an atom bomb; that has been pushed back to a few years.