On Monday, the White House hastily organized a press teleconference on
the Iranian nuclear deal. The accord—brokered by the world’s six major
powers two years ago—is to President Trump’s foreign policy what
Obamacare is to his domestic policy: he is determined to destroy it,
without a coherent or viable strategy, so far, to replace it. It’s also
not clear that Trump fully understands its details, complex diplomatic
process, or long-term stakes any more than he does health care.

During the White House briefing, I asked the three senior Administration
officials whether, after months of inflammatory declarations about the
“bad deal” and the “bad” government in Tehran, the Trump Administration is
moving toward a policy of regime change. It often sounds like it.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Congress
in June that U.S. policy includes “support of those elements inside Iran
that would lead to a peaceful transition of that government.” Last
month, the Defense Secretary, James Mattis, described Iran as “a country that is acting more like a revolutionary cause, not to the
best interests of their own people,” and added, “until the Iranian
people can get rid of this theocracy.” Shortly after Trump’s
Inauguration, a memo circulated by hawks within the Administration
suggested that Iran was susceptible to “coerced democratization,” a
euphemism for regime change. Authored by Mark Dubowitz, of the
Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the memo argued that “the very structure of the regime invites instability, crisis and
possibly collapse,” and urged the White House to work against the
reëlection this year of President Hassan Rouhani, the chief sponsor of
the nuclear deal on the Iranian side.

At Monday’s briefing, an official responded to my question by saying
that the Administration wants to “see change in the malign behavior of
the regime” and an end to Iran’s “destabilizing” influence in the Middle
East. The language was vague, but Trump Administration pressure is
intensifying. This week, the President defiantly fought the unified recommendation of his entire foreign-policy and military
teams, including Tillerson; Mattis; the Joint Chiefs chairman, General
Joseph Dunford; and the national-security adviser, H. R. McMaster, to
certify to Congress—as required every ninety days—that Iran is complying
with its obligations in the deal. The U.N. nuclear watchdog and the five
other major powers party to the deal say it is. Trump certified it once,
in April, and finally agreed to do it again, on Monday, but, reportedly,
he does not want to do it a third time, in October.

To placate the President, his staff amassed a list of complaints—on
Iran’s missiles, support for terrorism, aid to Syria, hostility to
Israel, human-rights abuses, and cyberattacks—to show that Tehran is in
“default of the spirit” of the nuclear deal. This laid the groundwork
for a more aggressive policy. On Tuesday, it began. The Administration slapped new sanctions on eighteen individuals and entities linked to weapons
development or procurement and software theft. In a joint statement, the
State Department, Treasury Department, and Justice Department denounced Tehran for
undermining “regional stability, security, and prosperity.” The
Republican-led Congress is deliberating further punitive measures.

For two years, I covered the tortured diplomacy from both Washington and
Tehran. I now feel the deal slipping away. The most important
non-proliferation agreement in a quarter century, it was a diplomatic
breakthrough because no one liked it and every party had to compromise.
It succeeded in ending thirty-six years of tension in a way that—even
Iran concedes—could have facilitated diplomacy on other flash points,
notably Syria’s grisly war. It extended the potential “breakout” to produce a weapon to a year or more. It stipulated in three different ways that Iran will never be allowed to develop a nuclear bomb, and forged an international agreement on automatic “snap back” sanctions if it should try. It allowed Tehran to get some closely monitored capabilities back over time, yet it
allowed the United States to maintain sanctions—and leverage—on Iran for
other issues.

On Tuesday afternoon, I sat down in New York with Iran’s foreign
minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, first one on one, and then with a small
group of American journalists, to discuss the precarious state of play.
We met at the elegant residence of the Iranian Ambassador to the United
Nations, near the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Zarif has spent a week in
New York—on the pretext of a speech at the United Nations—partly to
salvage the agreement. He has appeared on American television shows, met
with members of Congress and former officials, taken the stage at the
Council on Foreign Relations, and talked to the press. He seemed
frustrated that he no longer has an interlocutor in Washington. He has
not yet spoken with Tillerson. In contrast, he noted, he and former
Secretary of State John Kerry “probably spent more time with each other
than any two other foreign ministers in history” during two years of
intense negotiations.

Zarif rejected suggestions by the Trump Administration that the deal be
renegotiated. “It would be extremely dangerous to even contemplate
reopening these negotiations, because now we all go into any possible
negotiations with even higher expectations,” he told me. “It was
complicated enough to reach this deal already, and it would be
impossible to reach another deal.”

Zarif said that he does not rule out talks with the Trump
Administration. U.S. and Iranian technical experts still meet on
compliance; they will do so later this week, in Vienna. “We’re not
opposed to the possibility of a meeting between us and Secretary
Tillerson if it is necessary for the implementation of the nuclear
deal,” Zarif told me. He later told a group of us, “If we succeed in
seeing good faith on the part of the United States in the implementation
of the nuclear deal, then it would be a foundation and not the ceiling.
And it would be possible to engage in other areas. We haven’t seen that
yet.”

He added, “I haven’t asked for a meeting, and I don’t think I will.”

Like other nations that are party to the deal, Iran is confused about
Trump’s strategy—and whether he wants to scrap the deal altogether,
renegotiate, or try to apply so many punitive measures that Tehran will
be tempted to walk away from the deal on its own. “It’s not clear what
the Administration is planning to do,” Zarif said. “I think now they
have come to the realization that scrapping the deal is not something
that would be globally welcomed.”

The implications extend to diplomacy well beyond the nuclear deal, he
warned. “The message the United States is sending to the rest of the
world is that you cannot count on the U.S. being committed to its
international undertakings. So, not only is that a bad signal to Iran
but also a bad signal to anybody else, whoever contemplates talking to
the U.S. or negotiating with the U.S.”

President Obama worked with five other major powers to secure the
agreement. He opted to deal with Iran on the single toughest
challenge—its nuclear program—when Tehran was on the cusp of the ability
to produce a weapon within two to three months. The deal lessened the danger of rogue
nations getting the world’s deadliest weapon and, his Administration
argued, might open channels for discussions on other flash points.

On Tuesday, Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign-policy chief,
reaffirmed the major powers’ support for the accord. At a joint press
conference with the Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, she said,
“We have the duty to make it clear that the nuclear deal doesn’t belong
to one country. It belongs to the international community, to the U.N.
system,” she said. “We share responsibility to make sure that this
continues to be implemented fully by all.”

Trump is instead focussing on the totality of disputes, all at the same
time, and seeking to “neutralize” Tehran to address them. At the White
House briefing, a senior Administration official argued that Obama had
jeopardized U.S. interests by downplaying the scope of Iranian threats.
So far, Trump has garnered the support of Israel and predominantly Sunni
countries led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates to alter,
amend, or end the deal. But no big powers agree with him. At two recent
international summits, for NATO and the G-20, Trump urged European leaders
to avoid or block new business with Iran. He got little bite. At least
three major U.S. allies have sent their ambassadors to Iran to
Washington, to try to convince the new Administration to support the
accord—and to explain Iran to Trump Administration staffers who were not
involved in the diplomacy. Trump appears willing to chart a risky
course, whatever the repercussions. For the first time in years, U.S.
and European policies on Iran are taking divergent paths.

Now that the U.S. has imposed new sanctions, Zarif said that Iran would
reciprocate. Tehran’s parliament responded to growing tensions with the Trump Administration by increasing funds for
Iran’s missile program, the Revolutionary Guards, and its élite Quds
Force, which has a controversial presence in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and
Yemen. The move is striking because parliament is dominated by reformers
and centrists loyal to Rouhani, who have often split with hard-line
elements in the Guards’ leadership. On this issue, they have united.

The cycle of tit-for-tat, which defined volatile relations between
Washington and Tehran for more than three decades after the 1979
revolution, is back in play.

As if on cue, Iran’s Judiciary on Sunday announced the conviction and
sentencing of an American doctoral student to ten years in prison on
espionage charges. A hard-line newspaper, Mizan, leaked the name of
Xijue Wang, from Princeton University, who was arrested eleven months
ago. The university had been using back channels to quietly win his
release.

The executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran, Hadi
Ghaemi, said in a statement on Monday that “over and over again, we’re
seeing foreigners who were legally allowed to enter Iran being
imprisoned as political playing cards by hard-liners who want to use them
as hostages in their dealings with Western countries.” Ghaemi said the
goal of such cases was to undercut the engagement with the West that
Rouhani and other Iranian moderates have sought.

Wang was born in China and is a naturalized American. He is studying
nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Eurasian history, including
Iran’s former Qajar dynasty. He was poring over historical documents in
Tehran libraries. The Iranian government spokesman Gholam-Hossein
Mohseni-Eje’i described Wang as an “infiltrator” who “entered Iran in a
particularly sneaky way” to gather intelligence.

Rouhani, who has championed the nuclear deal since he was elected, in
2013, won a landslide reëlection, in May, by five million more votes
than in the first poll. He is due to be sworn in next month. But, on
Sunday, Rouhani paid a personal price. Iran’s hard-line judiciary
announced the arrest of his brother, Hossein Fereidoun—a former Ambassador to Malaysia and a key
member of the nuclear negotiating team—on unspecified charges of
corruption. Fereidoun was released on ten million dollars bail, reduced
from fifteen million—an exorbitant sum in any country.

As tensions steadily rise between Washington and Tehran, the question is
whether a defiant American President and Iran’s hard-line factions will
succeed in gutting the nuclear deal—and ushering in a new era of
confrontation in the Persian Gulf and, potentially, across the Middle
East.