Donald Trump’s self-congratulatory speech on Iran on Wednesday night was as puzzling as it was divorced from reality. I had hoped he would declare victory and end the war. Some feared he might provide cover for a ground invasion. Instead, he told us in essence to be patient, that he is almost done, but he was utterly unclear about what more there is to accomplish.

If there was ever a purpose to the war, it was to curtail Iran’s capacity to develop a nuclear weapon. Trump harped on that goal repeatedly in his speech, noting that he had long vowed that he “would never allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon”. But he didn’t mention that Iran has long agreed to eschew a nuclear weapon. If that is the only goal, this entire war has been pointless.

Trump disparaged as “a disaster” the deal that Barack Obama made with Iran, proudly noting that he had “terminated” it. But Obama’s deal was designed to prevent Iran from securing a nuclear weapon by imposing strict limits on the enrichment of uranium and requiring intrusive international inspections. With the deal shredded, Iran proceeded to enrich uranium to just short of what is needed to produce roughly a dozen bombs. It would have taken only weeks for the final enrichment steps, although turning enriched uranium into bombs is more complex.

Yet Trump said nothing about enrichment, which was a principal focus of the negotiations that he aborted by going to war. He has noted that the canisters of highly enriched uranium (about 970lbs) are buried, and said on Wednesday that if Iran were to try to approach its “obliterated nuclear sites”, US satellites would notice and US missiles would follow. But that was true before Trump launched this war of choice. So what was the point of the war? Iran had said in the recent negotiations it would be willing to dilute the enriched uranium and keep only a small amount, but it now possesses all of it in unadulterated form.

Trump mocked Obama for having given Iran $1.7bn in cash as part of the nuclear deal. Those were funds (plus interest) that Iran had paid to the United........

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