Washington looks at multilateral options to pressure Tehran
WASHINGTON – Once dismissive of international fora and of America’s historic security relationships, President Donald Trump is now turning to both in his effort to ramp up pressure on Iran over its ballistic missile work, its illicit weapons exports and its sponsorship of global terrorist networks.
Trump administration officials are calling for new Security Council sanctions on Iran and negotiating with Britain, France and Germany to coordinate a new US-EU sanctions regime that will target Iran’s “malign activities” – policies that Washington, Jerusalem and Arab capitals consider destabilizing, intrusive and hegemonic – which the president says were bolstered by the financial boon Tehran received from its 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers.
Administration officials say that sufficiently concrete actions from those three EU governments on Iran’s nonnuclear activities, in addition to clear indications that they are willing to negotiate an addendum agreement to the nuclear deal, will keep Trump from pulling out of the agreement outright in May – a deadline outlined by the White House last month.
It is part of Trump’s strategy to apply pressure to Iran on multiple fronts, including by threatening Europe with a trade war should it fail to take US concerns with Iran’s push through the region more seriously. EU governments have in recent years questioned whether Tehran is truly the
in this twisted law and until then reduce the rank of the embassy in Warsaw. Today’s political interests are important; Jewish history is more important,” he added.
MK Itzik Shmuli (Zionist Union) said: “Probably the next step of Morawiecki’s pathetic project to erase the crimes of the Poles is going to be blaming the Jews for their own Holocaust tragedy and presenting the Nazis as victims of the circumstances. He would have to sue the six million Jewish victims and the survivors before it will happen.”
MK Tzipi Livni (Zionist Union), who was present at the conference, tweeted: “It is moving to hear Ronen Bergman question/attack the Polish prime minister about the law which forbids mentioning the participation of the Polish people in the Holocaust, when he tells the story of his family and is applauded by the audience.”
Former prime minister Ehud Barak said “the ugly face of the new antisemitism has been exposed – the nationalist ‘fake news’ government that attacks the courts and free media in its country. For some reason, Bibi [Netanyahu] and his government are finding it difficult to unequivocally condemn the phenomenon – and to stop all contact with this disgraceful Polish government.”
Also responding to the comment, MK Tamar Zandberg (Meretz) said: “While the Israeli government stammers and tries to “talk” about the Polish law, the Polish government does not stop and continues in a way that flirts with Holocaust denial and distortion of the history of the Holocaust. No political interest can justify it – the Israeli government must stop the dangerous tango with antisemitic parties and leaders. Instead of Israel leading a zero-tolerance line on antisemitism, racism and distortion of the memory of the Holocaust, it is twisting and making ties with the great antisemites.”
This is not the first time such an equation has been made by a Polish official.
Last week, Andrzej Zybertowicz, an adviser to President Andrzej Duda, wrote on Twitter: “Yes, many Poles were complicit in the Nazi crimes. And I regret this very much. But isn’t there also the truth that many Jews were complicit in the Nazi crimes?”
Poznan Mayor Jacek Jaskowiak, a member of the liberal-conservative opposition party Civic Platform, told The Jerusalem Post last week that he sees such comparisons as inappropriate.
“This is not the way to discuss it,” he said. For instance, he said, there were Jews who helped in the crematorium in the Auschwitz death camp, but “it is not possible to say these Jews helped Nazis. They were forced to do it – if they didn’t, they would be killed. In such extreme situations, you couldn’t expect normal behavior.”