The new American strategy for Iran is to dismantle the nuclear deal and lay the groundwork for military action against Iran’s nuclear facilities. Mike Pompeo, Trump’s most recent Secretary of State, recently visited Saudi Arabia and Israel, and in both countries he focused almost exclusively on Iran. The Israelis are becoming increasingly concerned that a permanent Iranian military presence in Syria will harm their security. Netanyahu recently expressed dismay when Lavrov refused to rule out a long-term Iranian presence in the Golan Heights. John Kerry recently revealed that the Israelis frequently appealed to the Obama administration to attack Iranian nuclear sites. He also revealed that all American allies in the Middle East have repeatedly implored the United States to take military action against Iran.

The Iran nuclear deal was specifically focused on freezing Iran’s capacity to enrich uranium over the next 25 years. In 2014, Pompeo, then Republican senator of Kansas, went on record as stating that “it is under 2,000 sorties to destroy the Iranian nuclear capacity. This is not an insurmountable task for the coalition forces.” These are not the words of a man who has much patience for diplomacy. North Korea is not Iran: the North Koreans already have nuclear weapons and the ability to strike American targets. Pompeo speaks softly with the North Koreans, but with Iran, which has no nuclear capacities (and according to Pompeo himself, was not seeking them prior to the nuclear deal), he carries a stick.

No doubt, Trump and Pompeo do not expect the Iranians to accept any renegotiation of the nuclear deal. This is already clear from the absurd requirements they expect the Iranians to accept in any future deal. The Trump administration desires any future deal to stop Iran from pursuing its geopolitical objectives in the region while Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Israel freely pursue their own policy of further destroying the Palestinians, supporting radical Islamists in Syria against Asad, and creating the worst humanitarian crisis in the world in Yemen.

The Iranians already see the nuclear deal as a huge compromise: Iran is a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and the treaty clearly states that signatories are not under any legal obligation to refrain from enriching uranium, so long as it is used for civilian, not military purposes. The fact that the Iranians even accepted this deal is, from their perspective, already a major concession to Western powers, and the only reason they accepted the deal was to escape years of crippling economic sanctions. The idea that they would now return to the table after years of grueling negotiations for yet another round of negotiations is highly unlikely.

The Trump administration team no doubt knows this, and must already have discussed how to react to the possibility of Iran’s decision to pull out of the deal. The Trump administration will withdraw from the nuclear deal whether or not their European partners do, and will do all it can freeze Iran’s economy, effectively retaining the sanctions the Iranians hoped to escape by signing the nuclear deal: “Even once all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran have been lifted, Iran will remain one of the most sanctioned countries on earth.” This will embolden hardliners in Iran who saw in the nuclear deal little more than capitulation to the fickle and ever-changing demands of the West. The Iranians will likely themselves abandon the deal if the cost of remaining in it becomes higher than the cost of pulling out. This means that they will in all likelihood reinstate their enrichment program. The Trump administration is betting that this will occur, and that it will cause European and American power to unite behind an American military attack on Iran. All of the pieces will be in place: the United States, Europe, and major American allies in the Middle East will all support an American military strike on Iran.

No sooner did Pompeo end his brief visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel than did Netanyahu go live on Israeli television and, standing behind a screen that read “Iran Lied” in big black letters, claim that he has special evidence of a secret Iranian nuclear program. Political theater: the Washington Post reports that most of the evidence presented dates back to 2015, before the nuclear deal was even signed, and that “intelligence experts and diplomats said he did not seem to have presented a ‘smoking gun’ showing that Iran had violated the agreement, although he may have helped make a case on behalf of hawks in U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration who want to scrap it.”

American military action against Iran raises the specter of a wider regional war. The Russians will no doubt see any American attack on Iran an attack on one of their key assets in the region. Those opposed to military action against Iran need to start speaking up now if they hope to inform the public on the disastrous consequences any attack on Iran is likely to have, not least for the Iranian people themselves.