Trump secretly threatened EU over Iran
A week before Germany, France and Britain formally accused Iran of breaching the 2015 nuclear deal, the Trump administration issued a private threat to the Europeans that shocked officials in all three countries.
If they refused to call out Tehran and initiate an arcane dispute mechanism in the deal, the United States would impose a 25 percent tariff on European automobiles, the Trump officials warned, according to European officials familiar with the conversations.
Within days, the three countries would formally accuse Iran of violating the deal, triggering a recourse provision that could reimpose United Nations sanctions on Iran and unravel the last remaining vestiges of the Obama-era agreement.
The U.S. effort to coerce European foreign policy through tariffs, a move one European official equated to “extortion,” represents a new level of hardball tactics with America’s oldest allies, underscoring the extraordinary tumult in the transatlantic relationship.
President Donald Trump has previously used the threat of a 25 percent tariff on automobiles to win more favorable terms in America’s trade relationship with the Europeans, but not to dictate the continent’s foreign policy.
It remains unclear if the threat was even necessary as Europeans had been signaling their intention to trigger the dispute resolution for weeks. While the U.S. views the mechanism as critical to re-imposing sanctions on Iran in as quickly as 65 days, the Europeans see the measure as a last chance to salvage a deal they view as vital to reducing tensions and limiting Iran’s nuclear program.
“The tariff threat is a mafia-like tactic and it’s not how relations between allies typically work,” said Jeremy Shapiro, the research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations.
When asked about the tariff warning, a senior U.S. official said, “We’ve been very clear that the JCPOA was a horrible deal,” referring to the Iran nuclear deal.european officials complained privately that Trump’s threat only complicated their decision Tuesday to invoke the mechanism, which starts the clock on 65 days of negotiations with Iran about returning to full compliance with the deal. If the dispute isn’t settled, U.N. sanctions could be reimposed on Iran, including a blanket arms embargo.
Officials in Britain, France and Germany say they had planned to initiate the mechanism, but Trump’s threat nearly caused them to backtrack out of concern that they could be viewed as stooges of Washington if word of the threat ever leaked.
“We didn’t want to look weak, so we agreed to keep the existence of the threat a secret,” a European official said.
Following the U.S. killing of Iran’s top commander, Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, Iran said it was no longer bound by the limitations of the deal but would continue to cooperate with the International Atomic Energy Agency.