How they see us: A deepening rift over Iran sanctions
The Trump administration is treating its international allies like its enemies, said Carrie Nooten in Le Monde (France). After the United Nations Security Council last week rejected a U.S. proposal to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on Iran, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo declared that France, Germany, and the U.K.—all of which abstained from the vote—had decided “to side with the ayatollahs.” It was an outrageous claim. The three European powers had spent months trying to get the U.S. to agree to a limited extension of the embargo— which prohibits Iran from buying and selling tanks, fighter jets, and other conventional weapons, and is due to expire in October—because they knew Russia and China would veto the U.S.’s harsher version in the Security Council. The Europeans suspect the U.S. wanted its arms embargo measure to fail so it could reimpose all the sanctions lifted by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, not just on arms but also on oil sales and banking agreements. “U.S. diplomatic isolation is the main outcome of this chaotic process.”
The Trump administration can’t reimpose sanctions, because it pulled out of the Iran nuclear deal in 2018, said Maurin Picard in Le Figaro (France). The Obama-era agreement, signed by the three European powers plus the U.S., Russia, and China, lifted some sanctions on Iran immediately and set an end date for others—including the conventional-weapons ban—in exchange for Iran’s curtailment of its nuclear weapons program. The
U.N. Security Council resolution that endorsed the deal stated that any signatory could “snapback” those sanctions if Iran violated the deal. Pompeo is now trying to activate that provision, even though the U.S. is no longer a party to the agreement. Pompeo claims absurdly that when it comes to Iran, “America will not appease, America will lead.” Does he not understand “that the post–Cold War Pax Americana is dead and buried,” killed by an isolationist Trump administration?
It’s astonishing how little support the U.S. has been able to muster, said Borzou Daragahi in Independent.co .uk. Of the 14 other members of the Security Council, only the Dominican Republic—a temporary member “with zero stake in the security architecture of the Middle East”—voted in favor of the indefinite arms embargo. This fiasco has exposed the desperation of the Iran hawks in the Trump administration. Faced with the prospect of a Trump defeat in the November election, they’re attempting “to sabotage” the nuclear deal so thoroughly that a President Joe Biden will find it impossible to normalize diplomatic relations with Tehran. In his attempt to destroy the Iran agreement, Trump is instead destroying the credibility of the U.N. Security Council, said Carsten Luther in Die Zeit (Germany). The other members of the council will “simply ignore” the U.S. attempt to snapback sanctions. “Absurd debates and proposals are now likely,” along with dueling vetoes and “new threats and sanctions against states that should actually be partners.”