Trump must stop Iran’s nukes

Iran’s rejection of negotiations offered by Donald Trump in a letter to supreme leader Ali Khamenei last week underlines the need for the US President to do much more to convince the terrorist-supporting regime in Tehran that he means business when he warns that the alternative to talking is “the military option” that “will solve the problem … (but will be) a terrible thing for them”.

As Mr Trump said last weekend: “We are down to the final moments. We can’t let them have a nuclear weapon.”

His warning that “something is going to happen very soon” reflected the view of veteran nuclear expert David Albright, who wrote last week that “Iran is undertaking the near-final step of breaking out, now converting its 20 per cent stock of enriched uranium into 60 per cent enriched” that can become weapons-grade uranium in days.

That is the grim reality of the challenge facing Mr Trump, who must act decisively to forestall the threat.

Western nations, whatever their anxieties about the new US administration, must join him in exerting maximum pressure on Tehran.

The President must not allow himself to be beguiled in the irresolute way Barack Obama was when he did his deeply flawed nuclear deal and Joe Biden was when he stopped enforcing sanctions to appease Iran and then watched helplessly as its oil exports soared from 300,000 barrels a day to 1.7 million in 2024.

With inflation in Iran at 40 per cent and a currency that has lost 95 per cent of its value since 2018, the ayatollahs’ regime is at its lowest point since the revolution that ousted shah Reza Pahlavi in 1979.

Retaliatory attacks by Israel have shown the weakness of Tehran’s air defences, exposing the feeble deployments guarding its nuclear program.

Iran’s terrorist proxies – Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis – are in dire straits. The Assad regime in Syria is no more. It is a good time to exert maximum pressure.

Ayatollah Khamenei says Mr Trump’s offer of negotiations is bullying. But the odious regime in Tehran – buoyed, perhaps, by Mr Trump’s failure to fulfil his warnings to Hamas about “hell to pay” if it doesn’t release all Israeli hostages – has yet to be convinced he would use the “military option”.

Mr Trump must leave the ayatollahs in no doubt he will ensure Tehran does not get nuclear weapons.