Europe reviews options on Iran, seeks ways to mend rift with U.S.

BRUSSELS — It is by now a familiar, humiliating pattern. European leaders cajole, argue and beg, trying to persuade President Donald Trump to change his mind on a vital issue for the trans-Atlantic alliance. Trump appears to enjoy the show, dangling them, before ultimately choosing not to listen.

Instead, he demands compliance, seemingly bent on providing just the split with powerful and important allies that China, Iran and Russia would like to exploit.

Such is the case with the efforts to preserve the 2015 Iran nuclear pact. Both French President Emmanuel Macron and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the pilgrimage to Washington to urge Trump not to scrap the agreement. Their failure is very similar to what happened with the Paris climate accord, and to what is happening now with unilateral U.S. sanctions imposed on steel and aluminum imports, and to Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

And with each breach, it becomes clearer that trans-Atlantic relations are in trouble.

However angry and humiliated, those allies do not yet seem ready to confront Trump, wishing to believe that he and his aides can be influenced over time. It is reminiscent of what Samuel Johnson said of second marriages: a triumph of hope over experience.

But there are signs that patience is wearing thin and that many are searching for solutions as Trump, in the name of “America First,” creates a vacuum of trans-Atlantic leadership that the Europeans have so far seemed incapable or unwilling to fill.

“The allies are certainly sick of this but don’t seem to have an alternative,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former career State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

“The Europeans are invested down a path of trying to please the president, not out of belief but more hope against hope that they will convince him,” he added. “And they only pursue this at such a level of embarrassment because they don’t have an alternative.”

At least for now. After their statement Tuesday regretting Trump’s response and promising to work with Iran to preserve the deal, the foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany are to meet Monday with Iranian officials “to consider the entire situation,” said the French foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian.

Already, Macron spoke Wednesday with his Iranian counterpart. Afterward, the Élysée Palace issued a statement saying that it was “the will of France to continue to enforce the Iran nuclear deal in all its dimensions” potentially widening a breach with the Trump administration.