Focused Read in 3-4 minutes
"In Europe, Standing Up to
America Is Now Patriotic
Trump’s decision to
leave the Iran deal is bigger than Iran. It’s exposing more cracks
in the trans-Atlantic alliance.
The United States and
Europe have had serious foreign-policy disputes before—notably
during the Iraq War...
But since he took office in January 2017, President
Trump’s decisions, including his withdrawal from the Paris climate
accord
and his imposition of steel and aluminum tariffs on European
countries, have initiated a series of severe disagreements.
And the
U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear agreement with Iran may be the
gravest yet.
It was the combination of
European and U.S. sanctions that helped bring Iran to the negotiating
table over its nuclear program, ultimately resulting in the accord
Iran, the U.S., the EU, and others struck in 2015.
But that coalition
has split with the U.S. withdrawal, and the Europeans are now openly
flirting with ways to skirt the coming reimposition of the U.S.
sanctions on the Islamic Republic that had been waived as part of the
deal.
“Even mass media are
talking about extraterritorial measures, sovereignty, and standing up
to the U.S.,” Delhpine O, a French lawmaker with President Macron’s
En Marche party, said at a panel discussion Wednesday at the Atlantic
Council in Washington. She added:
“And all of a sudden this becomes
something of national pride, which I’ve not seen … for a number
of years. We have to be careful with this because it will probably
become a matter of public opinion … of sovereignty, or pride, of
standing up to protect our own interests.”
In an attempt to protect
European companies’ investments in Iran, the European Commission
said it would enact regulations that would prevent those companies
from complying with sanctions the U.S. will reimpose.
It’s unclear
how exactly this will work—European companies are already starting
to withdraw investments from Iran for fear of U.S. reprisals. Iran
stands to lose substantial European investment regardless,
calling
into question whether the Europeans can save the deal, which was
premised on Iran’s getting economic benefit from accepting
restrictions on its nuclear program.
But ultimately the dispute says
more about trans-Atlantic relations that it does about Europe’s
ability to get its companies to invest in Iran.
The U.S. and Europe
continue to cooperate closely on a wide range of issues...“Neither side wants this
disagreement [over the Iran deal] to affect other parts of the
relationship,” Axel Hellman, a policy fellow at the European
Leadership Network, said Tuesday at a separate panel discussion at
the Atlantic Council.
“But … we might see foreign ministers start
to question the very foundations of their relationship with
Washington.
Security has always been a cornerstone of that
relationship, and from a security point of view this is really
kicking the EU in the teeth.”
(Emphasis is mine.)
Or as Caroline Vicini, the
deputy head of the EU delegation in Washington, said Wednesday at the
Atlantic Council:
“We’re unfortunately out of lockstep with the
United States. We’re on two sides of this … very unfortunate
affair.”
(Emphasis is mine.)
The
debate in the U.S. ... generally deals with
the questions of whether the agreement was a good one and whether
President Obama, who advocated for the accord, gave up too much to
Iran in exchange for too little.
But Europe sees the issue
differently. European negotiators had worked toward the accord for 12
years—
the U.S.’s subsequent participation starting in
2008 gave the process teeth—and saw it as the most effective
way to achieve security for the continent in the face of Iran’s
nuclear program.
“There had been lots of
discussions and controversies across the pond for the last decades,
but this is the hardest one because we see our core national-security
and continental-security interest being just ignored,” Omeed
Nouripour, a German lawmaker with the Greens, told me. “This drives
us into the hands of the Chinese and the Russians.”
(Emphasis is mine.)
Those two countries are
also party to the JCPOA, and have signaled their intention to remain
in it. But working with them presents its own challenges:
Yet German
Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited Russia twice in the past
month—visits that prompted Russian media to ask whether a thaw in
relations was imminent.
What this adds up to is
that the fate of the Iran deal is bigger than Iran—it stands to
fundamentally shift how EU foreign policymakers view the
trans-Atlantic alliance.
If the Paris climate accord, the steel and
aluminum tariffs, and the digs about NATO spending weren’t enough,
the Iran deal has reinforced the European perception that on certain
issues they are on their own.
“It is no longer such
that the United States simply protects us, but Europe must take its
destiny in its own hands,” Merkel said after Trump withdrew from
the deal. “That’s the task of the future.”
Similar comments echoed
across the bloc in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal.
Federica
Mogherini, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, said that while
the signatories to the JCPOA “regretted” the U.S. action, the
bloc would look to maintain and deepen “economic relations with
Iran.”
French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told Europe-1
radio: “Do we want to be vassals who obey decisions taken by the
United States while clinging to the hem of their trousers? Or do we
want to say we have our economic interests, we consider we will
continue to do trade with Iran?”
The most potentially
significant response from Europe came Thursday when European
Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the commission
would work to enact a never-used statute that blocks European
companies from complying with U.S. sanctions.
... Now, Iran says it will
remain in the agreement as long as the Europeans guarantee the
economic benefits that were supposed to come with the JCPOA.
... Mark Dubowitz, the chief
executive of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a critic
of the JCPOA, told me the Trump administration is going to pursue a
maximum-pressure campaign against the Iranian regime.“
And, of
course...that only works if you deter European and other
companies from returning to Iran ..."
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