Story highlights Authors: Trump's decision to decertify the Iran deal is driven by campaign commitments and his own ego

Overturning the deal without a new, better plan seems unwise, and Congress understands it, they write

Aaron David Miller is a vice president and distinguished scholar at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and author of "The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President." Miller was a Middle East negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations. Follow him @aarondmiller2. Richard Sokolsky is a non-resident senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. From 2005-2015, he served as a member of the Secretary of State's Office of Policy Planning. The views expressed in this commentary are their own.

(CNN) President Donald Trump's speech on the Iran deal and Tehran's activities in the region reflects a tough-minded approach with objectives that are at best unclear and likely unrealistic.

He appears to want Congress to pass new deal-breaking terms that Iran will never accept, leverage the Europeans into joining, and force Iran through sanctioning the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and ratcheting up the pressure to accept a new accord. None of this is likely to happen. In effect, having opened up the certification process, the President has now guaranteed a new competitive and combustible phase in US-Iranian relations.

But Trump's real objective may be to goad Iran into walking away from the accord and thereby accepting the blame for its demise.

Aaron David Miller

Richard Sokolsky

The President's decision not to certify that Iran is complying with the 2015 nuclear agreement is a departure according to the terms of the 2015 Iran Nuclear Review Act (INARA). But unless Congress imposes new sanctions related to nuclear issues, it will allow the administration to maintain a flawed but still functional nuclear agreement that allows the US to avoid responsibility for walking away from the accord for now.

Clearly, the President's national security team tried to find a way to keep the US in the deal and avoid provoking a crisis with its allies and Tehran, particularly at a time when the administration can't solve the North Korean nuclear challenge.

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