Lobbying limited Trump’s decision on Iran, but there are concerns about who else might influence the president – and how

Donald Trump’s unilateral decision to renege on the 2015 UN-approved nuclear deal with Iran was roundly condemned on Saturday by friends and foes alike. Britain joined France and Germany in declaring continued support for the agreement as written. Iran was backed by China and Russia in deploring Trump’s move as unwarranted and dangerously destabilising.

That Trump does not much care what others think has been plain all along. But what looks on the outside like a diplomatic disaster could have been much worse. Trump had been widely expected to withdraw from the deal completely, demand harsh sanctions, and take other steps to demonise Iran as the world’s leading “terrorist state”.

The fact that Trump stepped back was the result of intense, high-level lobbying. Pressure was applied by senior White House officials, departmental chiefs and close allies such as Theresa May, who personally intervened by phone. The outcome: Trump’s worst instincts on Iran were curbed, at least for now.

Leading the campaign inside the West Wing were three former generals – John Kelly, Trump’s chief of staff; Jim Mattis, his defence secretary; and HR McMaster, his national security adviser. All three men served in Iraq and, unlike the president, know what it means to be on the sharp end. Their intervention meant Trump’s speech, while strategically misjudged, needlessly bellicose in tone, and historically and factually inaccurate, was not quite the unlucky cataclysm that had been predicted. In Trump’s White House, it was the night of the generals.

Whether Trump’s principal advisers and handlers, egged on by friendly overseas leaders, can pull off the same trick in future is an open question. But an important precedent has been set.

The biggest, upcoming concern is North Korea, where the US leader has recklessly threatened to rain down death and destruction on bumptious Kim Jong-un in response to the regime’s nuclear weapons build-up. Congress has belatedly woken up to the fact that the president has the power to launch a nuclear strike without any meaningful prior consultation. Legislation to curb that authority is now mooted. But for the time being, the three stooges – Generals Kelly, Mattis and McMaster – are probably the best, last defence preventing Trump from starting the third world war.

European allies will be gratified that their lobbying influenced the Iran decision. But their joy is not unconfined. Trump made clear he remained ready to wreck the accord completely at any point – and in practice, if not in theory, he has the means to do so, due to American domination of global banking and currency systems.

If Congress accepts his call for additional criteria by which to measure Iran’s compliance, including extraneous, non-nuclear issues such as its ballistic missile programme, and renewed US sanctions, an Iranian repudiation and the collapse of the deal may be months away.

All the same, Friday’s modest clipping of Trump’s wings raises hopes that, for example, the international Paris climate accord, which he arbitrarily renounced in June, could yet be repaired. McMaster and Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, indicated last month that the decision could be reversed. Many US states and cities are in any case ignoring Trump and keeping faith with the Paris targets.

If lobbying and pressure, carefully applied, can be effective in turning around the Trump juggernaut, the opposite also holds true. Assiduous courting by the governments of Israel and Saudi Arabia, not least during his high-profile visit to the two countries in May, has played to his worst, confrontational instincts. They were swift to congratulate him yesterday.

The unfortunate effects of this wooing include the US giving the Saudis a free hand in Yemen (with disastrous results); turning a blind eye to Riyadh’s human rights record (every bit as bad as Iran’s); and a US green light for new Jewish settlements and annexations in the occupied territories (thereby further undermining the moribund peace process).

The Saudis and Israelis have also been successful in convincing Trump that Iran’s regional influence-peddling poses an additional threat to US interests. Congressional Republicans and Democrats who benefit from campaign contributions or defence contracts are disinclined to challenge such thinking.

The irony, wholly lost on the historically ignorant Trump, is that in expanding its regional sway, Iran is behaving in much the same way as the US has done in Central and South America and, since 1945, in western Europe. The aim of such policies, purposefully pursued by both, is to enhance national security, political capital, and economic interests.

In this very familiar ambition, Iran has been assisted immeasurably by recent American policy that, for example, delivered up Tehran’s old rival, Iraq, on a plate after the 2003 invasion. When it comes to Iran, America is its own worst enemy. Know-nothing Trump is maintaining that tradition.