National Post (National Edition)
Europe challenges Trump over Iran nuclear pullback
Leaders fight to preserve deal with Tehran
BRUSSELS • European leaders pushed back sharply Friday against President Donald Trump’s decision to strip White House backing from the Iran nuclear deal, saying the move would weaken U.S. credibility, drive a wedge within the Western alliance and hurt global efforts to address dangers from Tehran to North Korea.
They also insisted they would carry on with an agreement designed to keep Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, and they challenged Trump’s authority to scuttle a deal that is enshrined in international law via a UN resolution.
“The president of the United States has many powers,” said European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini at a Brussels news conference minutes after Trump announced his decision at the White House. “Not this one.”
In contrast to Trump’s portrayal of a broken agreement that allows Iran to evade sanctions with only minimal inspections, a stern-faced Mogherini described the deal as “robust” and said Iran is upholding its end of the bargain, with no recorded violations.
“The deal has prevented and continues to prevent and will continue to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon,” she said.
The deal — a milestone achievement of co-ordination among the Obama administration and European capitals — is the latest pillar of transatlantic co-operation to creak as Trump attempts to cancel or renegotiate agreements that he condemns as insufficiently favourable to American interests.
Europe — long Washington’s most important partner in global security and diplomacy — was already reeling from Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Paris climate accord.
But many European leaders view any damage to the Iran deal as far graver for global security, since it could exacerbate nuclear crises in both the Middle East and the Korean Peninsula.
To emphasize the depth of European concern, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron issued a rare joint rebuke of Trump’s decision Friday evening.
While couched in careful diplomatic language, the statement left little doubt that the continent’s three most powerful figures see the U.S. move as a potentially dangerous shift at a time when they are already anxious about Trump’s bellicose rhetoric toward North Korea.
It urged the White House and Congress to “consider the implications to the security of the U.S. and its allies before taking any steps that might undermine” the Iran agreement.
Trump on Friday did not ask Congress to reimpose sanctions on Iran, leaving existing frameworks largely in place. That brought some relief to Europeans who view a full U.S. reversal on the accord as a nightmare scenario that could push the Islamic Republic toward nuclear weapons and disrupt attempts to bring North Korea to the negotiating table.
But Trump did ask lawmakers to impose a range of conditions that would add new pressure on Iran to retreat on its ballistic missile program and curb its widening role across the Middle East that Washington views as destabilizing to the region and its allies.
Even as he stopped short of jettisoning the deal, Trump’s demands still damaged American power by weakening Europe’s trust in its most important ally, policymakers said.
“Keeping faith to an agreement is absolutely fundamental in international diplomacy. And this is exactly what the president is putting into question,” said Norbert Röttgen, chairman of the foreign affairs committee of the German parliament and a top ally of Merkel. Germany is one of the parties to the deal.
The pact between Iran and six world powers essentially limits Tehran’s uranium enrichment in exchange for lifting international sanctions. Iran has repeatedly denied that it seeks nuclear arms, but it insists on retaining the ability to enrich uranium for use as fuel in nuclear power and research reactors.