On Aug. 31, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed for the eighth time that Iran continues to comply with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — more commonly known as “the Iran deal.” The agreement — which was negotiated among the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia, and Germany (the so-called P5+1) and Iran — places significant and verifiable constraints on Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons, especially the country’s capacity to produce the highly enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium required for a bomb. For that reason, arms control and nonproliferation experts overwhelmingly support the JCPOA and have urged all sides to continue implementing it. On Sept. 14, the Trump administration lived up to its end of the bargain — at least for now — by continuing to waive nuclear-related sanctions on Iran as required by the accord.

But the deal isn’t safe. Not by a long shot.

On Sept. 19, U.S. President Donald Trump took to the podium at the United Nations General Assembly to rage against the nuclear deal:

We cannot let a murderous regime continue … destabilizing activities [across the Middle East] while building dangerous missiles, and we cannot abide by an agreement if it provides cover for the eventual construction of a nuclear program. The Iran deal was one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into. Frankly, that deal is an embarrassment to the United States, and I don’t think you’ve heard the last of it. Believe me.

Trump’s disdain for the Iran deal is long-standing, and the president claims to have decided what he plans to do about it. But what that is, exactly, remains unclear. A key date to watch is Oct. 15, when Trump will next have to decide whether to certify Iranian compliance with the JCPOA to Congress. The certification is not required by the JCPOA itself; rather, it is a requirement of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act (INARA) passed by Congress in the summer of 2015. Under the law, the president must certify every 90 days that Iran is implementing the agreement, isn’t in material breach, and has not conducted activities that could significantly advance a nuclear weapons program — and that suspension of sanctions in accordance with the deal remains vital to the national security interests of the United States. If Trump fails to make such a determination and decertifies the deal, it would trigger a 60-day period for Congress to consider re-imposing (“snapping back”) nuclear-related sanctions suspended under the accord, including sweeping “secondary sanctions” that target foreign firms and banks conducting business with Iran. Under INARA, congressional deliberations would occur under extremely expedited procedures in both chambers, and a final vote could not be filibustered in the Senate.

Some outside hawks, including former U.S. Ambassador the United Nations John Bolton, are encouraging Trump to decertify Iranian compliance and abandon the JCPOA outright. For these hard-liners, that would pave the way for Congress and the administration to impose a “de facto global economic embargo” on Iran and, if necessary, for the United States or Israel to take military action.

Trump is undoubtedly attracted to the notion of tearing down yet another pillar of former President Barack Obama’s legacy, but it remains unlikely that he will just walk away from the JCPOA.Instead, the administration seems to be considering two other options meant to raise the heat on both Tehran and the international community to address the deal’s alleged shortcomings. As U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told Fox News on the day of Trump’s U.N. speech, “the president really wants to redo that deal.”

The first option would entail continuing to grudgingly certify Iranian technical compliance with the JCPOA and waive associated nuclear sanctions, while massively increasing non-nuclear sanctions and other forms of pressure on Iran outside the four corners of the deal. This represents a “waive and slap” approach, which is reportedly favored by Tillerson, Secretary of Defense James Mattis, and national security advisor H.R. McMaster. How expansive the “slap” would be remains uncertain. Some deal critics have called for re-imposing most sectoral, secondary sanctions suspended under the JCPOA on other, non-nuclear grounds even if it runs afoul of U.S. obligations under the nuclear agreement.

While there is little doubt that Trump will continue to apply additional non-nuclear sanctions on Iran, all signs suggest that “waive and slap” won’t be enough to quench his thirst to go after the nuclear deal itself. Instead, reports suggest that the president is leaning toward a second option, which could be called “decertification and renegotiation.” Although Trump has twice certified that Iran is complying with the JCPOA under INARA, he has made no secret of his frustration with this outcome. During an interview with the Wall Street Journal in July, Trump said he’d be “very surprised” if Iran were found in compliance next time, noting, “If it was up to me, I would have had them noncompliant 180 days ago.” In an apparent effort to lay the groundwork for such a move, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley presented the case for decertification in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute on Sept. 5. And on Sept. 14, Trump told reporters: “You’ll see what I’m going to be doing very shortly in October.… They’ve violated so many different elements and they’ve also violated the spirit of that deal.”

On Sept. 20, Tillerson acknowledged that Iran was in “technical compliance” with the deal. Yet Trump’s seeming determination to find Iran in noncompliance — despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary — has raised concerns that the administration may politicize intelligence or manufacture a crisis over inspections at Iranian military facilities to provide a rationale for decertification. This could indeed happen — but it isn’t actually necessary. Under Congress’s nuclear agreement review act, Trump could simply decide that U.S. compliance with the JCPOA no longer serves American interests, decertifying it on those grounds and kicking the issue to Congress to debate re-imposing sanctions.

However, if Trump goes forward with decertification, the immediate goal would probably not be to directly dismantle the Iran deal. Instead, the idea would be to use decertification to put Iran on notice and then try to leverage both additional non-nuclear sanctions and the threat that Congress or the administration may re-impose nuclear sanctions as a means to force Iran and America’s P5+1 partners back to the table to renegotiate the deal on more favorable terms. It is also conceivable that Trump will certify the deal one last time but threaten to decertify it 90 days later if the parties don’t re-enter talks. Either way, the goal would be to refashion the JCPOA to address its supposed “flaws,” most notably by making constraints on Iran’s uranium enrichment capacity, elements of which loosen at the 10-year and 15-year marks of the deal, permanent. Under this scheme, the administration would also seek to expand the contours of the deal beyond the nuclear domain to place limits on Iran’s conventional ballistic-missile arsenal and extract other concessions from Tehran regarding the regime’s support for terrorism and regional militancy.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has strongly encouraged the Trump administration to go down this road. During his own speech to the U.N. General Assembly, Netanyahu said, “Israel’s policy regarding the nuclear deal with Iran is very simple: Change it or cancel it. Fix it or nix it.”

This option would allow Trump to appeal to his base and signal displeasure with the deal. It would also enable the president, who fancies himself a master negotiator, to use the threat to the JCPOA as a bludgeon to produce a “better deal.” The belief that such an outcome is possible is deeply rooted in a fundamental critique of the Iran deal advanced by some Israeli officials, conservative think tanks, and Trump himself: the idea that Obama simply lacked the skill and political will to push for tougher terms when the JCPOA was struck in July 2015.

There’s just one problem: It’s a myth. More pressure would not have produced a better outcome two years ago — and threatening to blow up the deal will not produce a better one today.