Chasm between realities and EU’s daydreaming over Iran

Al-Arabia – One could predict that the Iranian regime would announce “it will stay in the nuclear deal or the JCPOA”, contrary to its blustering to pull out if the US did so.

The JCPOA was in fact between the world powers and the theocratic regime in Iran, however, without the US, the agreement is like a human body without a head.

President Trump believes the deal is catastrophic and one-sided in favor of Tehran. In the meantime, America’s European allies benefit economically with no care whatsoever about its catastrophic flaws and disastrous results.

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Fortunately, the EU lobbies could not persuade President Trump to stay in the deal but they egocentrically insist on maintaining and carrying on with a dead deal.

The US National Security Adviser John Bolton warned over President Trump’s determination to impose sanctions on the EU companies engaging in trades with Iran.

In contrast, during a summit in Sofia, the President of the EU Commission Jean-Claude Juncker said, “we look for a legal process to prohibit our companies from complying with the American sanctions”.

EU leaders should understand by now that if they stand in the way of President Trump’s strategy to have a perfect deal with Iran, he has a less expensive option, supporting regime change by the Iranian people

Hamid Bahrami

Respecting international laws

If the EU persuaded the Iranian regime to respect international laws and fulfill President Trump’s concerns regarding its unacceptable regional behavior or the JCPOA’s sunset clauses, which would eventually bring a real agreement, with the same resolve that it lobbied President Trump to stay in the deal, major and multinational European companies would be more satisfied than any risky process to protect them.

As the EU leaders are discussing and misleading the member states over trade with the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism, its companies are already leaving the Iranian market one after another.

The reality in the free market is that traders understandably are skeptical to invest in a faltering economy in a corrupt country. Thus, regardless of what politicians say, traders favor markets where they can earn more money or at least markets were the risks are significantly lower.

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French energy giant Total’s preparation to pull out of a billion dollar gas project in Iran due to facing of US sanctions proves this argument.

The current US strategy toward Iran has two parts:

• Force the Iranian regime to return to the negotiating table for sincere talks by scrapping the JCPOA and imposing paralyzing sanctions. This was reiterated recently by Brian Hook, a senior adviser to the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as he said, “the goal of abandonment of the nuclear deal is to achieve a ‘better’ and more ‘comprehensive’ deal than the 2015 nuclear pact.”

• Pursue a policy of regime change if the first part fails.

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The EU leaders themselves have no plan to address the major threats from Tehran but oddly, they are trying to do everything in their power to maintain the status quo. The UK Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson naively parrots the theocracy’s propaganda by insisting that “regime change in Iran will descend the Middle East into chaos”.

EU leaders should understand by now that if they stand in the way of President Trump’s strategy to have a perfect deal with Iran, he has a less expensive option, namely supporting regime change by the Iranian people and their resistance, which means the current EU leaders will lose face.

On the latter option, the US Secretary of State Pompeo tweeted on Friday, “We support the Iranian people who are demonstrating against an oppressive government”.

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Hamid Bahrami is a former political prisoner from Iran. Living in Glasgow, Scotland, he is a human right and political activist and works as a freelance journalist as his work cover’s Iran’s Middle East actions and domestic social crackdown. He tweets at @HaBahrami and blog at analyzecom.