Tasnim News Agency via Reuters

Iran launches and tests a Simorgh rocket at the Imam Khomeini Space Center in Iran in this handout photo released on July 27, 2017.

Perhaps it was all the other fires the White House has burning that prompted President Trump to begrudgingly approve another 90-day certification of Iran’s compliance with a nuclear deal he has long promised to scuttle.

But all indications are that the president’s fire could shift to the nuclear deal next time.

With another opportunity to withdraw from the 2015 international agreement coming up at the end of September, the White House appears to be laying the groundwork for a decision that would make good on a campaign pledge to pull the United States out of a deal Mr. Trump has called “disastrous.”

More broadly, such a move would bolster Trump’s vision of an aggressive and nationalist – as opposed to multilateral and internationalist – foreign policy.

Pulling out of the Iran accord would complete a trifecta of withdrawals from international agreements that Trump inherited from President Obama. The agreements symbolized Mr. Obama’s emphasis on multilateral approaches to international issues and diplomacy with adversaries.

Trump canceled US participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal shortly after taking office, and withdrew the US from the Paris Climate Accord in June.

But some US officials, members of Congress, and regional analysts are cautioning that withdrawing from a nuclear deal reached with other international powers would leave the US isolated on the issue, when Trump’s goal is ostensibly to isolate Iran.

Better, some say, to toughen the deal’s enforcement. Others recommend leaving alone a deal that is working – imposing strict restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and curtailing steps toward developing a nuclear bomb – and focusing instead on what the administration calls Iran’s “malign” activities spreading its influence in the Middle East.

An optic shift

“If the United States withdrew from the JCPOA,” the acronym for the nuclear deal’s official name, “the nuclear accord would continue [but] the political optic would shift,” says Robert Litwak, vice president for scholars and academic relations at the Wilson Center in Washington.

In reaching the deal, it was “the United States and the world versus Iran,” he says. But “if the United States unilaterally withdrew, the optic would shift to Iran and the world versus the United States,” adds Mr. Litwak, author of “Iran’s Nuclear Chess: After the Deal.” Under that new scenario, the US “would be the outlier.”

As Sen. Bob Corker (R) of Tennessee, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told a Washington audience last week, “You want the breakup of this deal to be about Iran. You don’t want it to be about the US, because we want our allies with us.”

The president, on the other hand, appears to be focused on scrapping the deal – whether that means the US is “going it alone” or not.

Trump recently accepted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s recommendation that the president again find Iran in compliance with the deal. But he also instructed his national security staff to prepare the rationale for the opposite finding – and for justifying a withdrawal – for the next three-month review he must deliver to Congress.

He has also signaled publicly that he is unlikely to again certify Iran’s compliance with a deal he insists Tehran is violating both in the letter and in the spirit.

Access to sensitive sites

The State Department is already preparing initial steps to ratchet up what Mr. Corker calls “radical enforcement” of the deal. As one example, US officials will soon call on the International Atomic Energy Administration (IAEA), the international nuclear watchdog agency charged with verifying Iran’s compliance, to seek access to Iranian military sites, according to news reports.

Iran has traditionally balked at opening up sensitive military sites it says have nothing to do with its nuclear program. Instead it fears foreign powers including the US are seeking intelligence on its other military activities. But barring access to international inspectors now could spark an international crisis and place the onus for an unraveling nuclear deal squarely on Tehran, some argue.

The administration also twinned Trump’s certification of Iran’s compliance with new sanctions not barred by the deal, and Congress has approved further sanctions on Iran that await the president’s signature. Moreover, the State Department said last week that a recent rocket launch Iran asserts was carried out in conjunction with its peaceful space program was a violation of United Nations restrictions on Iranian missile activity.

But opponents of US participation in the deal remain wary of the State Department and suspect it is really aiming to tie Trump’s hands with drawn-out haggling over access for inspectors – and to put off a US pull-out from the deal.

The best way to outflank the deal’s supporters inside government is simply to pull out of it, some argue.

John Bolton, former US ambassador to the United Nations and a vociferous nuclear deal opponent, says Trump should forget any qualms about offending the “international community” and instead follow the instincts that led him to pull out of TPP and Paris.

Compared with withdrawing from the Paris accord – an international agreement backed by nearly every other country in the world and by many in the US – “abrogating the [Iran deal] is a one-inch putt,” Mr. Bolton wrote recently in The Hill newspaper.

Some State Department officials say that European partners are open to working with the US to toughen enforcement of the nuclear deal, but no one sees any appetite among the five countries that joined the US in reaching the deal with Iran – Russia, China, France, Britain, and Germany – for renegotiating a tougher deal or pushing Iran to pull out.

What Iran is up to in Mideast

In that environment, some Iran experts say the Trump administration would be better off shifting its focus from the nuclear deal to a strategy for restraining Iran as it expands its influence across the Middle East and challenges US allies there.

“Just walking away from the nuclear deal is not a strategy, all that would do is isolate the US at a time when we need our allies and partners, particularly in the region, more than ever,” says Alex Vatanka, a senior fellow specializing in Iran at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “The US should leave alone a nuclear track that by all accounts is holding Iranian nuclear activity in check,” he adds, “and instead focus on the long-term challenge of the Iranian threat to US interests in the region.”

US leadership in the region is “missing” in terms of building a strategy to counter Iran’s growing influence in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and its increasing assertiveness in the Persian Gulf, Mr. Vatanka says.

“Key US allies are all over the place on Iran – just look at Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the other Gulf states,” he says, “so a first step in building a strategy countering Iran is to coordinate a unified message and align US and regional allies’ interests.”

Rather than causing an international uproar that would most likely bolster Iran’s international standing, the US should focus on reinforcing its regional leadership in ways that will restrain Iran, he says.

“With this deal in place, people aren’t losing sleep any more over spinning centrifuges and other pieces of the nuclear program,” Vatanka says. “What they’re losing sleep over now is what Iran is up to in the region.”

Joshua Roberts/Reuters

U.S. President Donald Trump shakes hands with John Kelly after he was sworn in as White House Chief of Staff in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., July 31, 2017.

“Send in the Marines!” the refrain goes. With the appointment of retired four-star Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly as his new chief of staff, President Trump has done just that.

General Kelly, until Monday the secretary of Homeland Security, brings a no-nonsense approach to leadership, loyalty to both commander and troops, and Mr. Trump’s respect. He offers Mr. Trump a semblance of order in a White House rife with palace intrigue – if Trump lets him. For Kelly to succeed, the president needs to empower him, political analysts say.

“My gut is Kelly will have some influence on him, and may even be able to bring a modicum of discipline,” says Tom Davis, a former Republican congressman from Virginia and an experienced Washington hand.

An early sign of Kelly’s clout came with the news Monday that Trump’s new White House communications director, Anthony Scaramucci, has been removed after a tumultuous 10 days in the role, during which he went on a profane tirade against other senior White House officials. Mr. Scaramucci’s departure came at Kelly’s request, according to multiple news outlets.

In addition, White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that all West Wing staff will report to Kelly - another sign that he has a mandate to impose order.

But while Kelly’s appointment represents an opportunity for Trump’s presidency to reboot, it may be complicated by larger issues, including the increasing distance between Trump and the Republican Party. The fact that Trump sacked former GOP Chair Reince Priebus as chief of staff just before appointing Kelly may signal “an open break with the Congressional GOP and the party at large,” writes presidential historian David Pietrusza in an email.

“One thing a general like John Kelly knows is this: fighting a war on two fronts can be fatal,” says Mr. Pietrusza. “I'm not sure if he or anyone else can fight a war on three fronts: against the Democrats, against the Republicans, and the tinderbox that is the Trump White House.”

Vacuum of effective GOP leadership

After six months, Trump still lacks a major legislative victory in a Congress controlled by his own party, following three failed attempts last week to pass health-care reform in the Senate.

White House disarray and the fact that the president is not steeped in policy or political negotiation contributed to the failure, but another factor is also at play: a Republican Party beset by internal divisions.

Trump’s rise to power, which brought a more populist element into the GOP, has complicated the party’s effort to govern, at least in the legislative branch, Mr. Davis says. Most members live in “safe” districts, and fear activist voters – who can cause them to be defeated in a primary – more than party leaders in Washington.

Enter Kelly, suddenly one of the most powerful players in Washington. The chief of staff’s job is to control access to the president, manage the information flow, and work with Congress and executive-branch agencies to enact the president’s agenda.

But “the No. 1 responsibility for the chief is to be able to go in, close the door, and tell the president in no uncertain terms what he doesn’t want to hear,” says Chris Whipple, author of the new book “The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency.”

“We’ll see about Kelly. If he can’t do that, and Trump isn’t willing to listen to advice like that, then this White House is finished.”

Most important word: staff, not chief

The most effective chiefs of staff have brought a specific skill set to the task, and perhaps most fundamentally, the president’s respect and trust.

Mr. Priebus, Trump’s chief of staff for his first six months in office, brought a knowledge of politics, having served as chairman of the Republican National Committee for six years, but not of policymaking. As an avatar of the Republican establishment, against whom Trump fought his way to the presidency, Priebus came into the West Wing with a major strike against him. His age, a generation younger than Trump, and mild manner also didn’t help.

In Kelly, Trump gets someone nearly his age, and with a professional profile the president clearly admires: a top-ranked military man. But Kelly does not have a background in politics or policymaking.

If it weren't for the new staff structure announced by Ms. Sanders, with White House officials reporting to Kelly, then his task would have been “almost mission impossible,” says Mr. Whipple, who interviewed all 17 living former chiefs of staff for his book.

Whipple cites James Baker (for President Reagan) and Leon Panetta (for President Clinton) – “an iron fist inside a velvet glove” – as top-tier examples of White House chiefs.

“The most important word in the title is staff, not chief,” says Whipple. “You can’t just order people around. You can’t just strap people up to a lie detector test in order to intimidate leakers. You have to be a diplomat, you have to have tremendous people skills.”

Generals rare – but helpful to national security

Trump may find it helpful to have a general at his side, in addition to his national security adviser, H.R. McMaster. John McLaughlin, former acting director of the CIA, tweeted as much on Sunday.

“Job # 1 for new WH COS Kelly: help Nat'l Security Advisor McMaster put more discipline into interagency policy process, esp on North Korea,” Mr. McLaughlin wrote.

Still, few military generals have served as White House chief of staff. The most recent, Alexander Haig, was President Nixon’s final chief, and helped ease the embattled president out of office at the height of Watergate. But Mr. Haig lasted just over a month under President Ford, whose decentralized structure quickly proved unworkable.

Former CEOs and governors have also struggled as White House chiefs of staff – top examples being Don Regan (under Reagan) and John Sununu (under President George H. W. Bush). Kelly may also face the same challenge in subsuming any “alpha dog” tendencies.

But some Trump supporters are cautiously hopeful.

“Like Fortinbras brashly entering to take charge of affairs in the final scene of Hamlet, General Kelly may be able to introduce discipline, order, and a chain of command. A touch of Parris Island in a chaotic West Wing,” writes Pat Buchanan, seen as a godfather of Trumpism. “My concern is that the general may not understand or agree with the populist, nationalist, anti-interventionist, America-First issues and ideas that put Trump into the White House and animate the coalition that sustains him.”

The night begins with a traffic stop.

It’s a warm evening in late May, and Corpus Christi police officer Skyler Barker spots a car with a license plate that is too dirty to be read. It’s a minor violation in Texas, but no ticket is produced. One of the passengers, like Officer Barker, is a veteran, and the two instead chat about their shared back pain.

Minutes later, Barker is outside a house speaking with a woman whose elementary-school-age grandson has run away. Four other grandchildren wander the quiet street as he takes down the boy’s description. Before he has time to radio the description out, however, the boy reappears.

Barker calls him over.

“It’s OK to get mad,” he says, “but you’ve got to stay at home. You can’t run away, especially at night.” The boy nods a few times, staring at his shoes. They part ways as the family thanks him.

Barker, a square-jawed Marine Corps veteran from Longview, Wash., says he is still as enthusiastic about the job as he was the day he started. But he, along with eight other current and former rank-and-file officers around the country interviewed by the Monitor, believe that the daily personal and professional strains on individual officers are frustratingly overlooked amid strong criticism of police conduct – particularly concerning use of lethal force – from some corners.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Corpus Christi Police Officer Skyler Barker, a Marine Corps veteran, was named the CCPD’s Officer of the Year in 2016.

President Trump, since his time as a candidate, has sought to correct that by showering rank-and-file officers with effusive praise and arguing that they should face fewer restrictions in performing their duties.

Joe Gomez, a sergeant in a suburban New York City police department, has felt a morale boost in his agency with Trump’s election. He says he knows officers in his department who have got Twitter accounts just so they can see Mr. Trump’s tweets.

In fact, Sergeant Gomez – who asked to be quoted with a pseudonym so he could speak candidly – thinks rank-and-file officers have been hoping for a president like Trump since as early as 2009, when then-President Obama criticized a Cambridge, Mass., police officer for arresting Harvard University Prof. Henry Louis Gates Jr., who was trying to get into his own home.

“A lot of police officers thought, ‘There hasn’t been investigation into this, how can the president speak on these matters?’ ” says Gomez. “That really set the emotional stage for Trump.”

Trump reiterated that campaign rhetoric by telling a group of law enforcement officers to “please don’t be too nice” with arrestees in a speech on New York’s Long Island Friday – and again provoked concerns that his seemingly unconditional support could encourage more aggressive, perhaps unnecessarily lethal, behavior from cops.

Ann Hermes/Staff

Corpus Christi Police Officer Mike Munoz (l.) and his partner Officer Skyler Barker apprehend a patron May 20 during a bar closing on their 9 p.m. to 7 a.m. shift in Texas. Officer Barker says he he doesn’t let himself go to sleep until 1 p.m., to ensure all his waking hours aren’t spent on duty. He tries to maintain outside friendships and makes time to go fishing, bike riding, and on trips with his wife.

While they are heartened to have a vocal advocate in the White House, however, officers say they see it as only a minor benefit for people in a profession that is both intensely local and becoming increasingly complex. None of the officers who spoke with The Monitor, all of whom were interviewed before Friday’s speech, were advocating for license to abuse their power. Police chiefs across the country also quickly pushed back against Trump’s comments, which appeared to condone police brutality.

“Ultimately it’s going to come down to state and local government,” says Frank Tona, an officer in a Maryland sheriff’s department. What he’s hoping Trump can do, he says, is “influence some of these state governments and local governments.”

Policing is also a profession in the midst of a jarring transition. What was once a life-long career passed from one generation to the next, allowing people to earn a middle-class living (and pension) without an advanced education, is becoming a high-pressure, highly technical, and complex job that may burn officers out in a matter of years and enable tragic mistakes.

Furthermore, there seems to be a gulf between officers and the public they protect when it comes to the changing realities of police work. A Pew survey from January found that 86 percent of police officers think the public doesn’t understand the risks and challenges they face too well or at all. A similar percentage of the public, meanwhile thinks they do, the survey found.

“You’re working odd shift hours, and overtime and doing these things that run kind of counter to the way regular people live their lives,” says Gomez. “I just don’t see there being a lot of contact between police and average citizens.”

The job has always been dangerous, officers say, but now it comes with almost unprecedented public scrutiny as well. And while their salaries are typically above the state median, the job is also getting more difficult, as officers are being asked to wear more and more hats – from lawyer, to warrior, to social worker, to therapist.

Wanted: Rookies with veteran instincts

Getting the right kinds of cops on the street could go a long way toward restoring public confidence in police, some officers believe. Conversely, some fear a feedback loop developing where cops ill-suited for the job create negative press, which scares away better-suited recruits.

“We need good, qualified folks who are motivated,” says Travis Vernier, who spent two years as patrol officer in the Oklahoma City Police Department before becoming a public information officer. “I just don’t want us to reach a position where policing has been so disparaged that nobody wants to go into police work, or the only people who want to be police officers actually match the [negative] labels that are being cast.”

Barker could be considered one of the prototypes for those needed officers. He was named the CCPD’s “Officer of the Year” last year. And departments around the country are currently exploring new recruitment and training practices. But those young-but-experienced, alert-but-calm, patient-but-decisive recruits are understandably hard to find.

Take the Minneapolis Police Department, which has been using a fast-track program for college graduates to enter the agency to help boost its experiential diversity. One of the program’s graduates, Mohamed Noor, is now on administrative leave after fatally shooting an Australian woman who had called 911 to report a possible sexual assault.

So what does that ideal officer look like? According to Dan Coleman, a former cop who now heads the special investigations unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, it’s a “young police officer [with] the wisdom of 20-year veteran.” According to Gomez, it’s someone who “has book smarts and street smarts.”

“You need someone who is friendly [and] willing to do those community-help functions,” adds Gomez, “but at the same time can kind of sniff out when something’s not right, and are going to have that sense that something’s about to go down.”

And no matter who signs up to be a cop these days, the odds are they won’t be in uniform as long as their predecessors.

Mr. Coleman followed in his father’s footsteps in becoming a cop, and spent 30 years in the Boston Police Department. He thinks the profession has changed so much in that period that decades-long careers like his will soon be unheard of.

“It’s probably a young person’s job, for the energy and fitness required to do it effectively and safely,” he says. “But ironically it probably requires the wisdom of being a little bit older to recognize what’s most important about it.”

Like Officer Vernier, what Coleman is worried about is the kind of person who will want to be a cop in the future.

“If your motivations are to come in and play cops and robbers or go grab the bad guys, it’s more than that,” he adds. “Are we attracting the right people who are motivated for the right reasons, to get into policing with a customer service, compassionate [approach] for serving people? Because that’s what’s needed right now.”

Ann Hermes/Staff

Corpus Christi Police Officer Skyler Barker responds to a missing child report on May 20 in Texas. The child returned home safely that night.

Needed: 'A lot, a lot of patience'

Working a night shift as a cop these days appears to be as much about words as it is about actions. And a prolonged career in law enforcement seems to depend as much on managing your home life as it does your work life.

In his four years as a patrol officer in Corpus Christi, Barker has developed a number of habits for himself on and off the job to help manage the stress and scrutiny that is being a modern-day police officer.

“Nine out of 10 traffic stops,” won’t result in a ticket, Barker says, no matter how abusive the driver may get. He doesn’t want to let the behavior of others influence his decision-making, he says, fearing “a slippery slope” that could lead him to abuse his power.

But he will always take the same cautious, wide-angle approach to the car, one hand aiming a flashlight at the window, the other resting on his holstered handgun. In quiet moments, he walks through hypothetical scenarios in his head to refresh his memory of training. He is continuously studying body language to distinguish, as he describes it, “I’m-getting-pulled-over nervous” from “I-have-drugs-in-my-car nervous.

Clocking out around dawn each morning, he doesn’t let himself go to sleep until 1 p.m. (unless it’s been an especially hard shift). He tries to do something with his wife, or surf the Internet – anything to ensure all his waking hours aren’t spent on duty. He tries to maintain friendships outside the Corpus Christi Police Department. He makes time to go fishing, bike riding, and on trips with his wife.

On that 9 p.m.-to-7 a.m. shift in late May, Barker’s tasks do run the gamut.

After speaking with the runaway boy, there’s a report of an assault, but another car responds first. Not long after comes a reported suicide attempt. Once again outside a house on a quiet street, Barker and his partner Mike Munoz converse softly with a young woman and her family, trying to convince her to go to a mental health facility for a few days.

“These calls take a lot, a lot, a lot of patience,” Barker says.

Over the course of the night he only uses his handcuffs a few times, and he doesn’t arrest anyone. He never unholsters his gun.

The cost of hypervigilance

There is always the potential that the gun will need to be unholstered, however. So every cop spends each shift in a state of “hypervigilance,” whether something dramatic happens or not, says Gomez.

Major incidents like shootings, armed robberies and are “really not the majority of the job,” he adds, but “you’re constantly on the lookout for threats.”

Spending an entire shift in a state of high alertness often means cops enter a depressive state when they get home, according to Kevin Gilmartin, author of the book “Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement.” That can mean cops stop exercising and socializing, they can put on weight and become clinically depressed.

Cops “don’t survive by trust, they survive by distrust,” says Dr. Gilmartin, who spent 20 years in law enforcement. “They view the world as one long felony in progress.”

“Then they get off duty and go into that collapsed state,” he continues. “Police officers detach from society.”

This detachment can sometimes end with tragic consequences. Officer suicides took more lives than gunfire and traffic accidents combined in 2016], and Barker goes to great lengths to prevent that kind of detachment.

“Camaraderie is important, but you’ve got to try to do things with people outside of work,” he says. “There are lots of ‘I used to’ people. I don’t want to be an ‘I used to’ guy.”

Officers will talk about how they used to go fishing, used to ride their motorcycle – “ ‘I used to do this and that, and I’ve stopped doing it,’ ” as Barker describes. “They get so used to being a cop that they stop being themselves.”

Gulf in understanding

This detachment may contribute to the gulf in understanding between cops and civilians when it comes to policing. It's a gap, officers say, that's exacerbated when they and their peers around the country are tarred by the bad actions of a few. While ideal officers may be rare, good cops far outnumber the bad ones, officers say.

“I don’t really see so much of maybe what was going on in Ferguson, [Mo.] – traffic tickets as means of revenue generation,” says Gomez. “What I see around me is pretty good policing.”

Indeed, while Barker admits that cops “should be held to a much, much higher standard” in their jobs than other professionals, given the power they have, he doesn’t see “a huge epidemic of officers using excessive force.”

What he does see are the daily stresses and strains of police work, and it’s something he thinks should get more attention.

“As a whole, people have no idea what we do on a night-to-night basis,” Barker says, “which is part of why they’re so quick to armchair quarterback it.”

MELANIE STETSON FREEMAN/STAFF

CHILDREN OF A STREET VENDOR IN AMBOVOMBE, MADAGASCAR

Madagascar is not turning out to be the paradise I expected. I am on assignment here for The Christian Science Monitor to report on drought relief, chronic malnutrition, and the prevention of famine – although most people (myself included) picture this country as the land of adorable lemurs. The island nation off the coast of Southern Africa, about the size of France and Belgium combined, is struggling. A reporter and I are here to find out who’s helping.

After a jarring, three-plus-hour ride in a UNICEF van, we arrive in Ambovombe, a small town with a dirt road through the center of it that is bustling with traffic. Peter immediately heads over to the hospital to speak with a local doctor on our topics of interest – in French. Since I don’t need to photograph the background interview with the doctor, and I wouldn’t understand the interview anyway, I decide to wander out to the road and try to look inconspicuous (fat chance). 

I raise my camera tentatively to get some images before the sun goes down. These would be my first photos in country. I’ve never been to Madagascar before, and until you’ve actually photographed in a place, you don’t know how people will respond to the camera. Will they duck and cover? Hiss and yell? Will they be flattered? Affronted?

I photograph a handsome man who leans against a wall by a kiosk in the golden light of dusk. No reaction. OK. I take a breath. Then I see a guy nearby wearing a great hat – they seem to be big on hats here – and a skirt as a sort of poncho. (He’s carrying it off beautifully, I might add.) He pretends he doesn’t notice me. So far, so good. I start photographing with more ease. After a while, everyone within a 20-yard radius has noticed me. Some are calling out to each other, playfully taunting those I’ve focused on.

The road is lined with vendors selling cooked food, clothing, produce, home goods. Pedestrians jostle by, returning home at the end of the day. The road itself is filled with vans, trucks, SUVs (most of them associated with nongovernmental organizations), a few sedans (how they made the trip on that rough road I’ll never know), and zebu carts. Zebus are docile cattle with distinctive humps between their shoulders and wonderful pointed horns. They are the draft animals here.

Soon a vendor – a mother – encourages me to photograph her two young children. I hesitate a moment: They are dressed in filthy clothes. One of them may not even have any pants on – not because her parents are neglectful, but because they cannot afford them. Shoes are far beyond the means of many. People live hand to mouth. Ninety-two percent of Madagascar’s population lives on less than $2 a day. This family is selling oranges, a few oranges displayed on worn-out white tarps. 

Their mother really wants me to photograph them. 

This happens everywhere I go. Parents, proud of their children, ask me to take a photo, perhaps because I am someone from far away with a really big camera – two really big cameras in fact. I’ve taken this photo of cute smiling children staring into my lens over and over. I don’t usually save the image for our photo archives. 

But I saved this one. 

Why? Two reasons, both of them universal. First, their body language: the way they squeeze their shoulders together, tuck their hands between their knees, and look out at me from under their brows. I’ve taken this photo in Cuba, Russia, the United States – name the place. Second: the children’s mother. It’s something so powerful yet so common we sometimes miss it. This mom, despite all the disadvantages so obvious to an outsider’s eyes, finds in her children something she wants a photograph to commemorate. That’s because she sees a different picture: She sees them with a mother’s heart. As should we all. 

Reuters

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Jay Clayton testifies before a Senate committee June 27.

In late July, a government agency handed over nearly $2.5 million to one person and $1.7 million to another. If the payouts had been lottery winnings, they might have drawn big headlines. Yet the rewards were barely noticed because they went to individuals who had simply revealed financial misconduct to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The SEC did not disclose the names of the whistle-blowers or the companies involved. But the message was clear: For employees who uncover wrongdoing, honesty is a reward beyond itself. (And the benefits to them and society can far surpass those of government lotteries.)

Since 2012, when the SEC first began to offer a bounty for insider tips on fraud and other types of corruption, it has given $156 million to 45 whistle-blowers. And these cases have led to the recovery of nearly $1 billion in penalties. Former SEC Chair Mary Jo White says whistle-blowers have become “key sources of very significant cases” and their disclosures have a “transformative impact” on the enforcement of financial laws.

Congress has passed several laws since the 1970s aimed at protecting whistle-blowers from reprisals. But it was the Dodd-Frank Act, passed after the 2008-09 financial crisis, that called for a large monetary incentive for anyone who reveals credible and timely information about a company’s shenanigans – as long as they are not themselves culpable. Since the whistle-blower award program started, the SEC has received more than 14,000 tips, many from people in other countries. The information has triggered hundreds of investigations and improved the rate of convictions and the severity of sentences.

These acts of courage – despite a fear of possible retaliation by a boss – show that many employees see themselves as guardians of their company’s integrity. A rise in whistle-blowing is also improving the ethical behavior of companies. A recent study by University of Iowa professor Jaron Wilde showed a significant decrease in financial irregularities in companies after a whistle-blower incident. That sort of beneficial effect may be the reason that Steven Mnuchin, President Trump’s secretary of the Treasury, backs laws that support whistle-blowers.

Leaks that reveal financial misdeeds are improving more than American companies. Since the 2016 release of the so-called Panama Papers, which showed a mass abuse of offshore tax havens by politicians worldwide, corruption scandals have erupted in many countries. In Pakistan and Iceland, the prime ministers were forced to resign.

The big lesson in rewarding whistle-blowers is that the vice of financial wrongdoing can be curbed not only by punishment but also by highlighting the virtues of honesty and transparency. Justice over evil always requires a measure of goodness. And it can all start with one person’s brave call to the SEC.