For the European Union, business opportunities outweigh the danger of Iran’s bad behavior

Dear Friend of FLAME:

While the Trump Administration pulled the U.S. out of the Iran Nuclear Deal—the so-called Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—President Biden has indicated he wants to rejoin the JCPOA, provided Iran returns to full compliance first.

The European Union, on the other hand, has always firmly opposed scrapping the Iran Deal—despite its many flaws. Today the EU is pressuring the U.S. to move quickly to repair the agreement, even without Iranian reversals in its now well-advanced nuclear program. Why?

As with many crimes, we can often understand the motives of international diplomacy and global relations by following the money. This is no more true than in the relationship between the European Union, and many of its member nations, and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Iran is the leading sponsor of terrorism around the world, responsible for attacks in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Asia. Its dictatorial theocratic leaders rule by brute force, it has an atrocious human rights record, and it seeks to spread Islamic revolution globally.

These misdeeds have not affected the appetite of Europeans to do business with Iran. While China, and the United Arab Emirates are today Iran’s main trade partners, the EU is not far behind—the three nations account for 19.5%, 16.8% and 16.3% respectively of foreign trade.

Most importantly, the EU used to be Iran’s largest trading partner before the current, U.S.-instigated international sanctions regime. No wonder after the JCPOA that European corporations got excited about the new “gold rush” they expected from a renewed era of EU-Iran cooperation.

This incentive, perhaps, more than anything else, demonstrates why the EU is so keen to rehabilitate Iran. Firstly, by pressing the U.S. to return to the failed and faulty Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and then to be rid of the sanctions regime completely.

Even while Iran was racing ahead towards nuclear weapons capability and involved in countless conflicts and massacres around the region, including the regular targeting of American serviceman in Iraq, the European Union has been hatching schemes to circumvent U.S. sanctions.

The U.S. had ramped up sanctions throughout the Trump presidency in reaction to Iran’s nefarious actions. Not five days after a series of deadly strikes by Iranian-backed forces in Iraq against U.S. bases and forces, the EU closed its first transaction with the Islamic Republic using a trade mechanism developed to avoid the sanctions.

EU heavyweights Britain, France and Germany—all members of the P5+1 group that signed the JCPOA—launched INSTEX in January 2019, a trade mechanism built to maintain commercial transactions with Iran without punishment by facilitating non-U.S. dollars and non-SWIFT transactions.

The move came weeks after the U.S. had started reimposing financial, economic and oil sanctions on Iran, following President Trump’s decision in May 2018 to pull the U.S. out of the nuclear pact.

INSTEX was in direct opposition to the “maximum pressure” the Trump Administration had exerted on the Islamic Republic in order to entice it to return to its JCPOA commitments. Of course, Iran has repeatedly violated the JCPOA, specifically by amassing a fast-growing stockpile of enriched uranium that is far above the amount allowed by the accord.

According to the Wall Street Journal, experts and diplomats said in March 2020, “that Iran could be four to six months away from having enough nuclear fuel for one (nuclear) weapon.” Even European diplomats conceded during this process that there had been no letup in Iran’s activities towards a nuclear bomb.

Bizarrely, though European officials created INSTEX to get Iran back in line, Iran provided the EU no such assurances. Obviously, this carrot did not work, and Iran is closer to a bomb than ever before.

According to Ariel (Eli) Levite, a nonresident senior fellow for the Nuclear Policy Program and Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment, “The Islamic Republic has the facilities and know-how to build nuclear arms, and even the missile technology expertise necessary to ensure their eventual delivery. Tehran is now enriching uranium at breakneck speed and operating far faster centrifuges that will allow it to reach its nuclear goals sooner than ever.”

Unfortunately, rather than punishing the Iranian regime for their actions—which can have a massive effect of global stability—the Europeans are pushing harder to have the U.S. return to the JCPOA. They are even sitting down with the Iranians without any preconditions, such as an Iranian agreement to roll back crucial parts of their nuclear weapons program.

At a recent virtual meeting between all the signatories of the JCPOA—except the U.S.—the European Union, China, France, Germany, Russia, Britain and Iran “emphasized their commitment to preserve the JCPOA and discussed modalities to ensure the return to its full and effective implementation.”

In other words, the EU believe the Americans’ exit from the JCPOA to be the problem—not Iran’s non-compliance. Moreover, to drive home the real intention behind the meetings, the joint statement said there would be a further meeting “in order to clearly identify sanctions lifting.”

Lifting sanctions is clearly the goal of the Iranians, but it also appears to be the aim of the Europeans. They are seeking to end any significant pressure on Iran in return for very little—perhaps some window dressing, though even that is obscure. It is clear that Iran has a dedicated mission to have nuclear weapons capability, and nothing will seemingly detract from that.

That the Europeans are playing along with this, with full knowledge about Iranian intentions, is a travesty. They are clearly placing financial interests ahead of global security, especially as Iranian leaders have repeatedly stated their desire to wipe the State of Israel off “the global political map.”

The U.S. should not agree to these conditions. We should abide by President Biden’s promise of not returning to talks until Iran has returned to compliance with the agreement. This should be the first step, before any talk of lifting sanctions.

I hope you will clarify to friends, family, colleagues and your elected representatives that the JCPOA is an abject failure and full of holes. A new, more robust agreement must be made—one that takes into account Iran’s regional and global behavior—an agreement that once and for all prevents, not just temporarily, but completely, Iranian nuclear weapons capability.

The U.S. should uphold to its allies that global stability comes before economics.

I hope you’ll also take a minute, while you have this material front and center, to forward this message to friends, visit FLAME’s lively Facebook page and review the P.S. immediately below. It describes FLAME’s new hasbarah campaign—which exposes the dangerous folly of the U.S. trying to entice Iran back intro the failed “Iran Deal” of 2015.

Best regards,

Jim Sinkinson
President, Facts and Logic About the Middle East (FLAME)