DONALD TRUMP tweets that, in demanding that Iran’s trading partners fall in line with his renewed sanctions regime, he is “asking for WORLD PEACE, nothing less!”

If the US president truly believed that, then his allies would have cause for concluding he has lost all grip on reality.

He doesn’t believe it, of course. Trump is merely trying to put a positive spin on the sordid reality that he is intent on bullying the world, including Washington’s closest allies, into accepting abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal.

Signatories to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, including Britain, Germany and France, confirm their ongoing formal adherence to the deal, citing a European Union blocking statute to protect EU-based companies.

But the US president’s warning that “anyone doing business with Iran will NOT be doing business with the United States” trumps the EU statute.

Major German transnational corporation Daimler, which includes Mercedes-Benz, has already run up the white flag in fear of losing its luxury car sales in the US and has end its joint venture investment in Iran.

Other major companies with appreciable US markets can be expected to do likewise.

Russia and China are likely to step up their links with Iran, at the very least preventing Tehran’s banking and hydrocarbon sectors from collapsing, but the latest US sanctions-linked crisis will probably have two outcomes.

The first is a further decline in Iranian working people’s living standards and the second a downturn in the widespread popular protests against capitalist austerity, for human rights and democracy.

Far from weakening the theocratic regime, Trump’s unilateral action will strengthen it by stimulating national unity in the face of an outside threat.