President Donald Trump is at a make-or-break moment with Iran.

Tehran has said it will soon take steps that likely violate the 2015 nuclear deal Trump himself abandoned, an announcement that came just days after the U.S. accused the Islamist-led country of sabotaging international oil tankers. In Europe, meanwhile, leaders are starting to acknowledge that they may have to walk away from the nuclear agreement or devise a new one.

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The confluence of events will test Trump’s weak appetite for military action, his ability to rally allies he has frequently snubbed and his seriousness about actually striking the “better” deal with the Iranians that he once promised. Along the way, Trump must win over officials well-aware of his history of misstatements and uneasy about relying on U.S. intelligence when a potential new Middle East war could result.

One test will come Tuesday, when Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, visits Washington to meet with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other Trump aides. Pompeo also plans to visit U.S. military officials in Florida on Tuesday to discuss Middle East tensions.

“President Trump has been trying to put maximum pressure on Iran with minimum cost for the United States. Iran is trying to force one of these two to give,” said Blaise Misztal, a Middle East watcher at the Hudson Institute. “Iran is pushing back as hard as it can on the United States while keeping the charm on for the Europeans. This is a tried-and-true Iranian strategy of driving wedges in the international community.”

Trump pulled out of the international nuclear pact in May 2018 and re-imposed stringent economic sanctions, a decision that angered European leaders. On Monday, an Iranian official said that within 10 days the country would go above the 300 kg of low-enriched uranium it is allowed to keep under the nuclear deal. The official also warned that the country may start enriching uranium above limits allowed by the deal.

The Iranian announcement coincided with a meeting in Luxembourg of European foreign ministers, who pressed Iran to keep adhering to the 2015 deal, which lifted sanctions on the country in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program. EU officials said they would rely on the International Atomic Energy Agency to declare if and when Iran is violating the deal.

“Our focus is to keep the agreement in place,” Mogherini said.

Diplomats at the gathering said, however, that if the IAEA were to declare Iran in violation, European countries could follow the U.S. in abandoning the deal or try to negotiate a new pact. It’s not clear what other major parties to the deal, China and Russia, would do.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last month gave the international community until July 7 to come up with new terms for the deal as a way to shield the Iranian economy from the brunt of U.S. sanctions. A European attempt to devise a “special purpose vehicle” to help Iran by giving would-be investors a financial workaround has sputtered so far.

European officials are reacting cautiously to American allegations that Iran is behind a recent series of explosions targeting oil tankers in the Middle East. Trump and his aides have sent mixed signals about whether the U.S. is willing to retaliate against Iran with a military strike.

The tensions have led Trump’s critics to warn that any military action could easily spiral out of control in a region already mired in civil wars, terrorist activity and other instability.

Trump’s personal history of stretching the truth and some of his aides’ past calls for regime change in Iran have alarmed critics who say his administration cannot be trusted. The continuing fallout from America’s 2003 invasion of Iraq, spurred by faulty intelligence, also looms over the Iran debate.

And Trump’s willingness to fight with European nations on other fronts — such as by imposing trade tariffs, questioning the value of the NATO military alliance and trying to derail efforts to combat climate change — have strained ties with even the strongest of allies.

Britain, whose intelligence services agree that Iran is likely the culprit in the oil tanker attacks, is among those allies warning of the perils of a war. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres has called for an independent investigation of the oil tanker attacks. German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas also preached caution on Monday, declaring that despite the conclusions of U.S. and British intelligence, “we need to treat all that in a very meticulous manner.”

“We continue to gather information … in a situation like this we need to be very meticulous and we are taking the time that we need,” he told reporters while in Luxembourg.

Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow with the Middle East Institute, said Trump may decide to simply stage a limited military strike on an Iranian target to draw a line in the sand, knowing that he does not need the approval of other nations.

“I think we might get close to a point where he does a limited strike to say, ‘I’m not just bluster,’” Vatanka said, noting that Trump’s electoral base might support such a short-term move. “But so much will depend on Iranian actions, too.”

So far, Trump has engaged in a campaign to pressure Iran’s government through crippling economic penalties, which also apply to other countries and international companies that do business with Iran. As part of this “maximum pressure campaign” the U.S. is threatening to sanction other nations that buy Iranian oil.

The moves have angered France, Britain, Germany, Russia and China, the other parties to the nuclear deal, who noted that Iran had not violated its terms. China has hinted that it will not zero out its Iranian oil purchases.

Trump has insisted the 2015 deal — negotiated under his Democratic predecessor, Barack Obama — is too narrow in scope and bemoaned its clauses that expire.

The president had hoped that the economic pressure would force Iran to renegotiate the deal so that it would be more comprehensive, curbing Iran’s non-nuclear military activities, too. But thus far, the Iranians have resisted his entreaties to talk, even as the U.S. sanctions have badly damaged their economy and scared off international investors. And Trump recently said on Twitter that it was “too soon to even think about making a deal.”

“They are not ready, and neither are we!” he added.

In the wake of Iran’s announcement Monday, Trump weighed in obliquely on Twitter by simply tweeting what appeared to be a headline: “Iran to defy Uranium Stockpile Limits”.

Pompeo previously laid out 12 conditions Iran must meet as part of any potential deal. Iran’s leaders say the requests are so far-reaching that the U.S. is actually actually seeking regime change, not an updated nuclear deal.

The Trump administration officially denies it wants regime change, saying it just wants a change in the regime’s behavior. There’s little sign, however, that it has put any significant effort into drafting details of a “better” deal that would curb Iran’s overall military activities and would be acceptable to Tehran.

Jacopo Barigazzi contributed to this report.

House Democrats are largely pursuing flashy, partisan, made-for-TV investigations targeting President Donald Trump, but one panel is taking a different approach — and getting results.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is quietly amassing documents on allegations of politically-motivated retaliation at the State Department; it’s looking into whether Trump has violated foreign emoluments and conflict of interest rules; and lawmakers are working to find out more about the president’s relationship with Vladimir Putin and how he leads American foreign policy behind the scenes — all without the fanfare associated with the other committees’ work.

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The panel has secured wins on a number of fronts, and aides and lawmakers alike attribute that to the under-the-radar support they’re getting from Republicans, many of whom have grown exasperated with the president’s decisions on foreign policy and national security issues. It’s also a historically bipartisan committee that boasts a strong relationship between the top Democrat and Republican on the panel.

“People are concerned to know the relationship between Putin and Trump,” Chairman Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) said in an interview. “We’re working our way there.”

Engel added that he was letting the other key committees with oversight duties handle some of the more inflammatory issues: “Obviously, Judiciary’s going to talk about impeachment and things like that.”

The committee’s record on securing documents and witnesses isn’t flawless, mostly due to the Trump administration’s stonewalling of Democrats’ myriad inquiries targeting the president. But unlike other committees that have faced the same roadblocks, the Foreign Affairs Committee hasn’t issued a single subpoena, held an official in contempt of Congress or taken an issue to federal court to secure critical documents and witness testimony.

“We’re not looking to throw bombs or pick partisan fights. We’re just looking to get facts,” said a committee aide, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the panel’s work. “The steady, painstaking approach is producing results.”

These probes don’t often grab headlines, but they’re a centerpiece of Democrats’ efforts to dig into Trump’s posture toward Russia — whether it’s downplaying the threat of Russian interference in U.S. elections, or refusing to directly criticize Putin.

Engel isn’t a fire-breather; he’s not a fixture on cable news like other committee chairs; and unlike other Democratic committee leaders, he actually has a productive working relationship with his GOP counterpart, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas). McCaul’s office declined to comment for this story.

Democrats say that Engel’s low-profile, bipartisan strategy is paying off. Republicans participate in the committee’s negotiation sessions with the Trump administration, and they show acute interest in many of the investigations — creating bipartisan buy-in on hot-button probes that can’t be dismissed as partisan broadsides.

Last month, the committee secured an interview with former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as part of their efforts to learn more about how Trump conducts himself on the world stage, both in front of the cameras and behind the scenes. Both Engel and McCaul attended the nearly eight-hour sitdown. The conversation focused on a number of foreign policy issues, including Trump’s handling of Russia and his private conversations with Putin.

“There really wasn’t daylight between the questions and the points that [Engel and McCaul] were making and the issues that they wanted to know more about,” another committee aide said when asked about the Tillerson interview.

And last week, the Foreign Affairs panel held a hearing on the Trump administration’s recent decision to bypass Congress to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies — a move that drew condemnation from McCaul and several other Republicans.

McCaul also backed Engel’s legislation earlier this year to block the Trump administration’s decision to lift sanctions on a Putin-connected Russian oligarch, and he opposed the president’s plan to cut off aid to Central American countries earlier this year amid the growing migrant crisis at the southern border.

That kind of bipartisan cooperation on the oversight front is virtually nonexistent within other committees, from the leadership down to the rank-and-file. Republican members of the Intelligence Committee have called on Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) to step down from his post, and the Judiciary Committee has been engaged in bitter partisan fights over a potential impeachment inquiry and access to special counsel Robert Mueller’s files.

Republicans’ willingness to work with Engel reflects the party’s longstanding concerns with Trump’s foreign policy decisions and his posture on the world stage.

But even though the Foreign Affairs Committee isn’t singularly focused on the attention-grabbing portions of the Mueller report, the panel hasn’t been immune to the president’s efforts to resist Democrat-led inquiries.

The White House and the State Department flatly rejected the panel’s demand for documents that detail Trump’s private conversations with Putin, and Engel has yet to issue a subpoena for those records nearly three months later, saying he’s still mulling it over with the House general counsel.

That approach stands in stark contrast to the more aggressive posture Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) has adopted, issuing subpoenas to some of Mueller’s central witnesses to examine the obstruction of justice allegations against Trump more closely.

The White House has taken steps to prevent his former aides from testifying on Capitol Hill and providing documents to congressional committees, often making broad claims of executive privilege that Nadler says are baseless. At the same time, that committee recently secured access to some of Mueller’s “key” evidence, and other House committees have already won twice in federal court to obtain Trump’s financial records.

Yet Engel’s bipartisan approach, in particular on political retaliation at the State Department — in which political appointees are accused of retaliating against career officials who challenge them — is making for more effective investigations, according to aides.

“It’s one thing to say that I might not agree with your politics,” a committee aide said. “But I think there is bipartisan consensus that retaliating against someone who’s a career civil servant because of their politics is and should be unacceptable to both parties.”