Can Europe save Iran nukes deal by threatening to kill it?
>>Europe is gambling on keeping the 2015 Iran nuclear deal alive by threatening to destroy it — a risky, oddly timed strategy that could backfire badly, European officials and analysts say.
The decision by France, Germany and Britain on Tuesday to challenge Iran’s breaches of the nuclear agreement and trigger what is known as the dispute resolution mechanism starts a clock that the Europeans may not be able to control, subject to unpredictable actions by the leaders of both Iran and the United States.
Already the move has angered Iran, which contends its breaches of the accord are justified and that the Europeans are bending toward President Donald Trump and his “maximum pressure” campaign of sanctions on Tehran.
The Europeans insist otherwise. But watching Iran and the United States head for a possible military escalation, they are trying at least to avoid an outcome in which Iran moves down the North Korean road toward a nuclear bomb.
“If there is a European strategy here, it’s essentially to try to buy time,” said Nathalie Tocci, a former adviser to the European Union’s former foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, who helped negotiate the 2015 deal with Iran. “The optimistic scenario is that they’ve done this to keep Trump happy and hope to stretch out the dispute process until the November US elections,” Ms Tocci said. The Europeans, she said, are wagering that “despite all the pressure on Iran, it won’t use the freedom it’s granted itself” to enrich uranium to bombready levels.
The Europeans also are hoping to induce the United States and Iran to somehow engage in negotiations on an enhanced deal that Mr Trump can call his own, even if it differs little from the current one, negotiated by President Barack Obama, that limited Iran’s nuclear activities — a deal Mr Trump has called the worst in history. “But it’s a very high-risk strategy,” Ms Tocci said. “It’s hard to see Tehran playing ball all the way until November.”
It is also hard to see those around Mr Trump, who have opposed the nuclear deal and supported his maximum pressure campaign, granting Iran any concession to get talks started, said Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform.
Wendy R Sherman, a key American negotiator of the 2015 accord, described the use of the dispute mechanism as “incredibly risky” and said “it will increase the likelihood of the demise” of the deal.
Mr Trump’s subordinates appear to believe their strategy is working. Iran’s government and economy are weakened, they say. And they add the US killing of a top Iranian commander, Gen Qassem Soleimani, in Baghdad nearly two weeks ago has deterred Iran in the region, rather than prompting further attempts to expel the Americans from Iraq and Syria.
But others, like Robert Malley, an American who helped negotiate the nuclear deal and now runs the International Crisis Group, say they are not so sure. They expect further retaliation from Iran and from the Iraqi militias it supports, including one led by a commander killed alongside Soleimani.
In its zeal to pressure the Europeans, a Trump administration official even threatened them with 25% tariffs on automobile exports if they did not invoke the dispute provision with Iran, according to a European official — which would be an extraordinary use of economic leverage for a foreign policy goal. The warning, first reported by The Washington Post, was conveyed in a single phone call.
An indication of the US administration’s mood came on Wednesday from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who said that he and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo believed United Nations sanctions on Iran would be swiftly reimposed now that France, Britain and Germany had triggered the dispute-resolution mechanism.
The Europeans made that move in response to Iran’s declarations that it would no longer honour the nuclear accord’s limits on Iranian enrichment of uranium — potential fuel for a bomb.
“I’ve had very direct discussions — as well as Secretary Pompeo has — with our counterparts,” Mr Mnuchin told CNBC. “We look forward to working with them quickly and would expect that the UN sanctions will snap back into place.”
But that outcome, which would likely terminate the agreement, is precisely what the Europeans say they are trying to avoid. There is nervousness that Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, with his eye on a post-Brexit trade deal with Washington, might crack, but European officials consider that possibility unlikely.
Mr Johnson and his government support the nuclear deal and collaborated on a statement with France and Germany on Tuesday that said “we are not joining a campaign to implement maximum pressure on Iran.” On Tuesday, Mr Johnson urged new talks with Washington and Tehran to try to negotiate a “Trump deal” to supplant the current one.
Under the dispute mechanism, said Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, time limits on discussions can be extended by consent. Any party to the deal can go directly to the UN Security Council to request the reimposition of UN sanctions, but no one is expected to do that.
The political unrest in Iran, following the killing of Soleimani and Iran’s accidental shooting down of a civilian airliner, creates uncertainty. The government in Iran is cracking down on protests, and with parliamentary elections next month, hard-line rhetoric is bound to increase.
While Iran insists its nuclear work will remain peaceful, its decisions to disregard the nuclear deal’s limits on both the volume and purity of Iranian nuclear fuel have raised worries that the country could amass enough enriched uranium to create a bomb in a matter of months.
“I think the attack on Soleimani will make the Iranians want to accelerate their nuclear programme,” Mr Bond said. “They’ve seen Kim Jong Un and the lesson from Trump, which is if you have nuclear weapons you can get love letters from the president, and if you don’t, your generals can get killed.”
Iran said on Thursday the three European states had succumbed to “high school bully” Trump when they triggered the dispute mechanism, Reuters reports. London said it was now time for a “Trump deal” to replace it, while Paris said broad talks were needed.