If he continues down this path, the president’s latest concession to Iranian interests won’t be his last.

The United States had “significantly improved its intelligence capabilities over the past six weeks of airstrikes in Yemen,” Y Net’s Ron Ben-Yishai observed in a recent analysis. In addition, U.S. disruptions of Iranian efforts to smuggle missiles and drones into the Arabian Peninsula had led to a “sharp decline in the Houthis’ stockpiles.” Thus, an uptick in the number of rockets the Houthis were firing on, for example, Israel, was actually good news. The terrorist outfit was “rushing to launch missiles and drones before they can be destroyed.”

And yet, the preliminary indications that the accelerated tempo of air strikes on Houthi positions by the Trump administration and U.S. allies is bearing fruit — a campaign that culminated on Tuesday in what has been described as the total disabling of Sanaa airport by the Israeli Air Force — may prove illusory.

In an abrupt and, apparently, impromptu announcement in the Oval Office alongside Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, the president declared that the Houthis had surrendered and the air campaign would come to a halt.

“We will stop the bombings,” said the commander in chief. “They have capitulated.” Trump added that “we will take their word” when they “say they will not be blowing up ships anymore.” We shouldn’t.

The United States and our Western allies have been the targets of Houthi aggression since the Iran-backed militant group erupted on the scene, in 2015. We will doubtlessly become the targets of new attacks from this outfit at a time and place of its choosing — likely after it has recovered from the damage Trump’s Pentagon meted out over the last several months.

The president’s change of heart was so abrupt that it caught the Israelis off guard, according to the Jerusalem Post. It was only yesterday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had promised a sustained retaliation against the Houthis for their successful ballistic missile attack on Ben Gurion airport over the weekend. Now, Netanyahu must calibrate his response lest his plans conflict with Trump’s.

So, what led to this sudden about-face? According to CNN, it has everything to do with Trump’s desire to ingratiate himself with the Iranian mullahs amid his pursuit of a second nuclear deal with Tehran.

“The understanding between the US and the Houthis not to attack each other is aimed at building momentum for Iran nuclear deal talks,” CNN reported. “The stand down is expected to serve as momentum towards the overall US-Iran talks over an Iran nuclear deal, people familiar said.”

That is exactly — I mean, precisely — how Barack Obama handled the Houthi threat.

“We have to take pains not to end up inflaming the situation by inadvertently firing on Houthi fighters,” one unnamed Obama administration official told the Wall Street Journal in early 2015, in advance of what would prove to be a failed diplomatic overture to the Iranian terrorist proxy organization.

At the time, the Obama administration was working closely with the legitimate regime in Yemen to coordinate counterterror operations against al-Qaeda on the Arabian Peninsula. The Obama White House would have been just as comfortable working toward that same objective with an Iran-aligned government in Yemen. Indeed, the shift in the administration’s focus “could place it on the same side as Iran in the Yemen conflict,” the Journal reported.

The Obamans deluded themselves into believing the notion promulgated by Obama’s State Department spokesman Edgar Vasquez that “the Houthis will have many reasons to talk with the international community.” As it turned out, an organization that had “Death to America, death to Israel” as its motto wasn’t interested in integrating itself into the U.S.-led economic and geopolitical order.

This was just one of many dispensations the Obama administration felt compelled to offer Iran to induce its cooperation with the West ahead of what became the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The Obama White House’s commitment to cajole Tehran into collaboration with the West led that administration to blind itself to Iran’s atrocities and provocations, and it seems the Trump administration risks falling into the same trap.

This alleged sop to the Iranian regime comes just days after British authorities announced the arrest of eight people, seven of whom are Iranian nationals, who are alleged to have been plotting state-sponsored terrorist attacks. “It is clear that these plots are a conscious strategy of the Iranian regime to stifle criticism through intimidation and fear,” U.K. Minister of State for Security Dan Jarvis said in reaction to the arrests. Indeed, Iran is a rogue state run by a terrorist regime. That has been the fundamental character of this regime from its inception. It will not be bribed out of its nature.

If Trump remains committed to securing something like a JCPOA 2.0, this concession to Iranian interests — eerily similar to one made by Obama — will almost certainly not be his last.