Comments made by US President Donald Trump about the sacking of his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson highlighted the fact that while the threat to world peace posed by North Korea has dominated the headlines in recent months, Trump is determinedly focused at least as much on another rogue state, which probably poses an even greater threat in the longer term – Iran.

Trump stated, "When you look at the Iran deal, I thought it was terrible, he thought it was OK. I wanted to either break it or do something. He felt a little differently." In fact, Trump had already set a deadline of May 12 to have new international arrangements in place to deal with Iranian rogue behaviour in terms of nuclear and missile proliferation, regional aggression, terrorism and other problems.

The reality is that while North Korea threatens violence, Iran is already instigating or provoking it on considerable scale – in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen and, recently, by flying a drone into Israel from Syria, prompting Israeli reprisals. In fact, most of Israel’s top military analysts now say it is only matter of time before further violence, probably on a much larger scale, develops between Israel and Iran.

Iran appears ever more confident it will achieve its hegemonic ambitions in the Middle East now that it not only controls four capitals – Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad and Sana’a – but is very close to completing its long-sought land corridor, across Iraq and Syria to the Mediterranean, facilitating its threat to Israel.

There seems little question the current situation is directly linked to the Iranian nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015 between Iran and the “P5+1” world powers. That agreement was portrayed as stopping Iran from gaining nuclear weapons. Today, not only is it clear that the JCPOA has deep flaws that will likely prevent it achieving that goal, it has actually clearly helped facilitate other Iranian bad behaviours.