Iran remains a repressive and disruptive regime, with a hideous human rights record, that has jailed several Americans since the deal, pursuing interests opposed to the United States in Syria, and underwriting Hezbollah. The nuclear deal was concluded in full knowledge of the Islamic Republic’s character, perhaps with the hope of tempering Iranian behavior over time, but never with any illusion that Iran would suddenly reinvent itself.

Yet this is what the Trump administration has demanded. America has made a mockery of the value of its signature on an international agreement. The world will take note.

Nothing in Trump’s speech was more scurrilous than this very Orwellian inversion of the truth: “If I allowed this deal to stand, there would soon be a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. Everyone would want their weapons ready by the time Iran had theirs.” In fact, Trump has single-handedly fast-forwarded that race by removing the constraints the deal imposed on Iran.

What are the president’s alternatives now? Prodded by his hawkish national security adviser, John Bolton, Trump apparently believes he can bring Iran to its knees, perhaps even precipitate regime change, through new and restored sanctions. At the least he wants a broader, longer-term deal than the one he’s ripping up. All that’s a pipe dream.

Iran is not North Korea. Braggadocio will get Trump nowhere with a proud nation used to working around the cost of confrontation with the United States. The diplomatic unity of purpose that led Iran to acquiesce to the deal in 2015 is now frayed. European allies are angered, Russia and China certain to push their own agendas. Iran’s economy is strained, and there are strong internal political tensions, but the 39-year-old Islamic Republic is resilient. Angered, it will not fold.

In truth, Trump was led to this decision not by any serious calculus about the deal, but by his susceptibility to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi fury at Iran, the pressure of conservative American Jews who support him and his iron principle that whatever Obama did must be bad. He succumbed to Iran derangement syndrome, a well-known American condition.

In an interview in Riyadh, Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, told me the deal was bad from the outset, and “We want to make sure that there is something in place that prevents Iran from ever going nuclear.”