The use of an Israeli private security firm to dig for dirt on senior members of the Obama administration linked to the Iran nuclear deal, as revealed in today’s Observer, shows how far President Donald Trump and the hawks around him are willing to go to destroy the agreement.

The 2015 deal is the last major element of Barack Obama’s foreign policy legacy left standing, after nearly 16 months of the Trump era. The drive to unravel the agreement is both deeply personal – driven by Trump’s animus towards his predecessor – and global in its implications for international peace and security.

The bid to discredit the deal – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) – with compromising information on two of its fiercest advocates from the Obama administration came to nothing. Instead, Trump’s campaign against it has relied on the simple repetition of derogatory phrases about it being the “worst deal ever” and “a major embarrassment”. It has remained a fixed point in Trump’s universe.

The struggle over JCPOA’s fate comes to a head at the end of this week, when Trump must choose whether to keep a set of sanctions suspended, or violate the deal by reviving them. Trump has reminded the world repeatedly that only he knows what he is going to do when the sanctions waivers fall due on Saturday, while hinting heavily that he will refuse to sign them.

If that happens, JCPOA could collapse quickly, or more likely stumble on wounded and weakened a while longer before crashing. Either way, the prospect of a new conflict in the Middle East will draw closer.

In view of these high stakes, European capitals are desperately seeking a compromise to satisfy Trump and salvage JCPOA by addressing the president’s complaints about the deal: that it does not address ballistic missile development or Iran’s role in conflicts across the region, and that some of the restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities expire in the coming years.

White House visits by France’s president, Emmanuel Macron, and German chancellor Angela Merkel failed to achieve a breakthrough, but UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson is due in Washington today to try his luck. Meanwhile, diplomats in London, Paris, Berlin and Washington (all parties to JCPOA) continue to exchange ideas on possible compromises. There is agreed text on tougher action towards Iran’s missiles and containing its regional expansion, but not so far on JCPOA’s “sunset clauses”.

In any case there is no guarantee that the US officials involved in these exchanges have any sway with Trump himself. He promised to kill the deal and seems bent on delivering. And his resolve has scrambled global alignments. The Europeans find themselves in agreement with Russia, China and Iran, as well as much of the rest of the international community. The US, meanwhile, finds common cause with Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

As the struggle has sharpened in the run-up to Trump’s day of judgment, the gambits on both sides have grown bolder. By flying, one by one, to Trump’s court in a bid to appease him, the Europeans risk exposing their impotence.

For his part, Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, showed a sure feel for his audience of one on Monday with an extraordinary stunt, displaying an Israeli intelligence trove on Iran – which in normal times would be quietly shared with allied agencies – in the style of a Las Vegas show. With a showman’s flourish, Netanyahu ripped black sheets off bookcases of files and panels emblazoned with CD-roms, while screens displayed the message “Iran lied” in 3ft-high letters.

The substance underlying the show did appear to be a remarkable intelligence coup – Iran’s nuclear weapons archive reportedly swiped from a Tehran warehouse in the middle of the night in January – but has so far only confirmed what was already known to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA): that Iran began a concerted weapons design project in 2002, but shelved it a year later, then continued some theoretical feasibility studies until 2009.

It is not clear whether Netanyahu’s performance was intended to sway Trump, a counter-balance to Macron and Merkel, or to do the US president a favour by providing political cover for a decision he has already taken. Trump has set 12 May as a grand season finale, with himself at centre stage. However, even if he reimposes sanctions by refusing to sign a waiver it will not necessarily spell the end for JCPOA. The sanctions legislation in play is targeted at foreign countries and companies dealing with Iran’s central bank but contains exemptions for states that significantly reduce their purchases of Iranian oil.

As preparations have been made, the US would have to give other countries some months to comply before targeting them, which could offer breathing space for more diplomacy.

Another raft of sanctions waivers come up for renewal in mid-July, however, affecting shipping and a broad range of trade and investment.

It would then be up to Europe and Iran to decide how to respond. Europe could comply or try to fight US sanctions, but big European companies, reliant on raising finance on the New York money markets, are likely to take fright and avoid dealings with Iran.

Anger is already mounting in Iran over the absence of the promised economic benefits from the deal, and the disappearance of European companies can only make that worse. Hardliners who opposed any external constraints on the country’s nuclear ambitions are waiting in the wings.

“The US looks like the non-compliant party now, so it doesn’t make much sense to shift the focus back to Iran,” said Ariane Tabatabai, an Iran expert at Georgetown University in Washington DC. “But there will be more and more pressure to loosely implement the deal as time goes by.”

One of the first likely flashpoints is likely to be the IAEA inspections. The Israeli trove of documents is likely to prompt demands for visits to newly identified sites at a time when Iranian incentives to comply are at a minimum. In that scenario, European states might go along with US sanctions, but the rest of the world, including the big Asian markets for Iranian oil, would make their own decisions.

“The Trump administration will find it harder than it expects to get countries to reduce their oil purchases,” said Peter Harrell, a former senior state department official who helped craft some of the Iran sanctions. For the Iran nuclear deal, Harrell added: “It is going to be a slow and messy end.”