Europe | Charlemagne

Splits over the Iran deal test Europe’s bond with America

A crunch is fast approaching

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PITY the poor European who seeks consistency. On January 22nd Mike Pence, America’s vice-president, said that the United States was on the verge of quitting the nuclear agreement signed with Iran in 2015. At the same time Rex Tillerson, the secretary of state, was in London expressing optimism that the deal could be saved with a bit of tinkering. Foreign ministers from across the European Union were in Brussels that day; the confusion hovered above their conversation like an Amazon drone bearing either chocolates or dynamite.

Mr Trump’s carnivalesque approach to the presidency has made life hard for America’s allies, but his first year in office has not brought forth anything like the full horrors that some predicted. Congress has boxed him in on Russia, NATO does not yet totter and trade wars have failed to break out (although this week brought worrying news). Even if many Europeans reject Mr Trump as baffling and odious—just 25% in a recent Gallup survey express approval of his presidency—the transatlantic bond remains intact.

But the threat to the Iran deal of 2015, now hanging by a thread, could change all that. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), to give it its full title, is the EU’s signature foreign-policy achievement (some might say there are few rivals). Three EU members—Britain, France and Germany—are co-signatories, along with America, Russia and China. The EU has a formal role in overseeing its implementation. The deal eased a security threat in the Middle East, reduced the likelihood of war between America and Iran, and represented a triumph for the EU’s preferred diplomatic method: dogged, law-bound and multilateral. The EU saw it as a springboard for commercial and cultural engagement with Iran and, though this was never a formal part of the agreement, a way to bring it in from the geopolitical cold.

Yet on January 12th Mr Trump threatened to reimpose sanctions on Iran within 120 days, thus nullifying America’s participation in the deal, if Europe failed to fix its “terrible flaws”. American worries with the deal seem to cluster around three issues: “sunset” clauses after which Iran can ramp up enrichment; Iran’s ballistic-missile programme; and its mischief-making in Syria, Yemen, Lebanon and elsewhere. The Europeans, unusually united in their defence of the deal, say that its purpose was precisely to hive off nuclear proliferation from broader concerns. But that argument seems to be losing ground in Washington.

Britain and, especially, France still hope to keep Mr Trump on board (Germany, without a proper government since September, is otherwise engaged). Diplomats say they have long leaned on Iran to curb its ballistic-missile programme. In March France’s foreign minister will visit Tehran to try to talk the mullahs round; Mr Macron himself has been invited to Iran. Mr Trump has also bestowed his first state-visit invitation upon his French counterpart. Mr Macron may visit just weeks before Mr Trump is due to make his final decision on the Iran sanctions, on May 12th.

Mr Trump has left the Europeans in an tight spot, obliged to side with Russia, China and Iran against their old ally. His threats to kill the Iran deal have already left it in a “zombie state”, according to a new report published by Bourse & Bazaar, a website that promotes trade with Iran. The side-deals Mr Tillerson is pushing for undermine the Europeans’ strategy of predictability—and there is no guarantee that they will satisfy Mr Trump (or the Iran hawks in Congress). Beyond Iran, tensions simmer between the EU’s instinct for engagement and an American approach that veers between aggression and unpredictability. This makes for some awkward conversations in a club that is not yet ready to consider life without American protection. “Trump highlights the strategic dilemma of the Europeans in a way that is very uncomfortable for them,” says Jan Techau, an analyst at the German Marshall Fund in Berlin.

How should they proceed? Mr Trump’s administration is clearly split on Iran. European efforts to rescue the deal would strengthen the hand of the square-jawed generals around Mr Trump who do not wish to antagonise America’s allies or embolden Iran’s hardliners. Yet Mr Trump has resisted pressure from his advisers before, as with his decision to withdraw from the Paris climate deal. He may well do so again.

Many argue that the Europeans therefore need contingency plans. America’s biggest weapon is not reimposing its own sanctions on Iran, but slapping punitive measures on European firms and banks that do business there. Ellie Geranmayeh of the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think-tank, suggests that the Europeans should work hard with Congress to seek exemptions from such “secondary sanctions”; if that fails, she says they should threaten countervailing sanctions on American investments in Europe. Others might well argue that a tit-for-tat trade war will do no one any good.

Europe help thyself

The American security guarantee remains indispensable; the primary task for policymakers on both sides of the Atlantic must always be to lessen divisions, not to accelerate a divorce. The best way to do that would be for Europe to spend more on its own defence, undercutting those in Washington, Mr Trump included, who see the EU as a free-rider. But Europe can practise some prudent insurance, too, working to develop its own nascent security co-operation, so long as that does not divert resources away from NATO. Mr Trump is especially erratic, but Europeans cannot simply assume that his successor will restore business as usual. It is only sensible for them to gird themselves for a world in which their interests may align a bit less often with America’s, whoever is in charge. Mr Trump, after all, won the presidency while holding its foreign-policy establishment in disdain. That lesson will not be lost in America; and nor should it be in Europe.

This article appeared in the Europe section of the print edition under the headline "Torn over Tehran"

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