The White House is in meltdown tonight after President Trump demanded sweeping last-minute changes to the US-Iran nuclear agreement, risking the collapse of months of painstaking diplomacy. Sources inside the administration say Trump, during a heated Oval Office meeting with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor John Bolton, insisted on clauses that would effectively gut the deal's core provisions. The demands include an immediate end to all Iranian uranium enrichment, the removal of all sanctions relief until Iran's ballistic missile programme is dismantled, and a requirement that Iran recognise Israel's right to exist.
European allies were blindsided by the move, with a senior French diplomat calling it 'a bomb under the negotiating table.' The crisis comes as Iran's economy buckles under US sanctions, but ordinary Iranians are bracing for a return to confrontation. A Tehran shopkeeper told me: 'We were promised relief.
Now the hardliners will use this to crush us again.' The deal's collapse would be a disaster for regional stability, but for the man in the White House, it seems only his base matters.
