Donald Trump has withdrawn the US from a multilateral nuclear agreement signed with Iran in 2015 and intends to re-impose economic sanctions on that country. In this way he is dismantling president Obama’s most important foreign-policy achievement. This point is underscored by Anthony Zurcher in a report to the BBC, in which he presents three reasons behind Trump’s decision, the first one being his purpose of “shredding the Obama legacy”, taking aim at practically every one of his predecessor’s achievements: he has pulled the US out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade negotiations, has announced his intention to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change, has re-imposed sanctions and travel restrictions on Cuba, has backed the repeal of some Obama-era controls on financial institutions, etc.

As Zurcher sees it, another reason behind Trump’s decision would be his “full-throated support” of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s far-right prime minister, after having previously expressed an opinion not very critical of the Iran deal.

And the last reason –according to Zurcher– would be the influence of “hawks” like Mike Pompeo –new Secretary of State– and John Bolton –new National Security Advisor– who recently replaced Rex Tillerson and HR McMaster, who had reportedly advised Trump against abandoning the agreement.

But Trump’s antipathy for Obama and/or sympathy for Netanyahu clearly do not exhaust all possible explanations of his decision. And although being surrounded by warmongers such as Pompeo and Bolton –and experts in torturing techniques, such as Gina Haspel, his nominee for heading the CIA– also plays a role, there is an important point missing in Zurcher’s explanation of Trump’s decision, and that would be the US need of foreign enemies.

In effect, after North Korea announced its intention of negotiating the dismantling of its nuclear program, the US looks on its way of losing one of its most hated enemies. In fact, a US-North Korea summit is being arranged for June 12. Although the chances of reaching a final agreement with North Korea will be eroded by Trump’s dumping of the deal with Iran, Kim Jong-un’s offer to negotiate with the US clearly undercuts the position of the most aggressive and belligerent voices in the US –among them, Trump himself– that promote raising military expenditures even more, disregarding the fact that the US is the world’s largest military spender, with expenses that in 2016 represented 36% of the world’s total. Thus, there is a need of enemies, and Iran is now the best choice. As we know, the US arms industry –baptized by President Eisenhower as “the military-industrial complex”– is very powerful in every sense, and it would be silly to believe that they are interested in peace and denuclearization.

Trump justifies his decision claiming that the agreement was “a horrible one-sided deal that should have never, ever been made”, and that, in any case, Iran was already violating it. But this is an argument that sounds very much like George W. Bush’s pretext for invading Iraq in 2003, that asserted that Saddam Hussein had a huge stock of “weapons of mass destruction” that –as we know– were never found after that country was occupied.

Although his supporters claim that soon a new, more favorable agreement will be signed, it is obvious that Trump does not have a plan in mind. In any case, Trump should be aware that if the US prevailed in its recent show of force with North Korea, that would not have happened without China’s weight on the Koreans. But the situation is different now, as the European countries, together with China and Russia are all against the breaking of the deal with Iran.