Donald Trump has launched a grenade into an already burning Middle East. The pin was pulled the moment he took the US unilaterally out of the Iran nuclear deal. Within hours, Tel Aviv reported Iranian strikes on the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights in Syria. And while Tehran has up until now remained coy about showing its hand on this front — regional experts have been quick to point out that, if confirmed, it would be the first time that the Iranians have hit Israeli targets directly. No proxy required. The Jewish state responded in unkind. Seemingly immune, as was the world community, to the rather obvious oversight that Tel Aviv’s unilateral annexation of the Golan back in 1981 has never been internationally recognised. President Trump has dumped the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the accord negotiated between Tehran and six major world powers, on the basis of nuclear secrets stolen by Israel. The latter claimed it had indelible proof that the Iranians had reneged on all promises to not pursue the bomb. This was good enough for Trump, no matter what the IAEA had to say. And yet again, the fact that Tel Aviv remains to date the only regional nuclear power, something that it has never officially admitted, appears insignificant. All of which places the Middle East on a most dangerous trajectory. Without the negotiated JCPOA framework, the US has once more – wittingly or unwittingly — demonstrated that Israeli security comes before anything else. Yet this move may well prompt Iran to seek nuclearisation for the dual purpose of deterrent and self-defence. This is to say nothing of the Saudi crusade for atomic capability. Indeed, the reformist Crown Prince has already warned of a possible nuclear arms race between the two arch rivals; while comparing the Iranian Supreme Leader to Hitler. This is anything but a slam dunk. In fact, it makes a mockery of Trump’s self-confessed commitment to a de-nuclearised Korean Peninsula. For if that happens, it will be despite of Trump, not because of him. And to all those analysts who were falling over themselves to laud the US president for reinventing himself as a man of peace, we say: Et tu, Brute? * Published in Daily Times, May 12th 2018.