EU Moves to Blunt Effect of US Withdrawal From Iran Agreement

The nuts and bolts of sanctions against Iran take the form not only of direct sanctions against Iran and Iranian companies, but also of sanctioning companies, US, European or other, that do business with that Iran.

As noted in the article below, Frances Total (oil), and Peugot (cars), Germany’s Siemons (electronics), and the PanEuropean Airbus (big planes) all do business with Iran and would be penalized under US sanctions. Total EU-Iran trade was around $20b-25b (and growing quickly) since US sanctions were lifted 2 years earlier.

That is roughly 100X the business US companies did with Iran that same year.

That’s why “the Iran deal” went into effect without Iran ever ‘signing’ the accord. The sanctions.

President Trump, whose actions and intentions are never easy to understand, apparently objects to the fact that the “deal”

  • slows rather than stops Irans march to nuclear weapons,
  • does not address Iran’s development of intercontinental missiles
  • does not address Iran’s support for proxy wars, proxies known to engage in terrorism etc…

The EU recently (yesterday??) announced plans to shield companies who do business with Iran and punish companies who deviate from their current course to comply with US sanctions.

In my estimation, this could be the beginnings of a pretty significant rift between the EU and the US.

It doesn’t make sense to me. If we want to stop Iran’s proxy wars, etc., we could do so without scrapping this agreement, which was never intended to address such things. Meanwhile we’re further alienating our closest allies. The next president’s apology tour is going to be epic.

His goals are right and proper but Pres. Trump appears to have miscalculated the strength of the U.S.-Euro alliance.

Maybe he thinks he is CEO of the West or maybe it was a garden-variety mistake. Many people view Europe with rose-colored glasses and seem to forget how far European countries are willing to go to aid their own corporations. (Hint: Europe has high taxes on rich people, but low taxes and even gov’t subsidies for its corporations.

Either way:
An alliance is not an alliance if you have to check on the loyalty of your allies at every fork-in-the-road, but smetimes ya have to look before you leap. Sometimes you have to build consensus before taking action.

Why should EU help out. They already expanded there borders right up to Russia off the back of American interest.

The sanctions we used regarding are pretty much the only sanctions we or anyone else have.

There is no other set of sanctions. Regardless of whether we want to sanction Iran for proxy war or for bad breath the only tools in the toolbox (except military action) are exact duplicates of the ones we used to force Iran to scaleback its nuclear ambitions.

At the outset if WW2 Britains first three offensives were against neutral countries. (Iceland, Madagascar and Iran). That’s not exactly taking the moral highroad, but we had their back.

When I was a young hellraiser if any of my brothers got into a scrap we fought first and asked questions. If, I dunno, your (hypothetical) wife or girlfriend is being beaten on the street you (again hypothetical) are not going to first figure out if she picked the fight or is being mugged. Hopefully you’d side with her and kick the other fellas ass.

Donald Trump made the apparent mistake of thinking Europe was that kind of ally.

Clearly its love of corporate dollars comes first. Alliances with the US and opposition ti Hamas etc. come second. Perhaps Donald Trump should have checked this before reimposing sanctions for a new set of otherwise laudable reasons.

I’m just thinking non Persian gulf states might have a say in this matter come winter…when they start cutting off oil to EU. :wink:

As for Europeans. I’ve been warning folk on this forum they aren’t our friends. They used us to support their expansionism again our interest in Russia.

We should be cultivating stronger relationships with European democracies rather than the authoritarian regime in Russia.

You don’t think some of those goverment in EU aren’t authoritative?

Your perception is kind of screwed up don’t you think?

Yes, I think European governments are mostly authoritative. Authoritarian? No. It saddens me to see Republicans defending a dictator and attacking our closest allies.

not surprising.

Come again?

Closest allies? When they rather do business with Iran then America?

Only a lib will say something that stupid.

They wouldn’t rather do business with Iran than the United States. That’s preposterous. They’re taking the path that they think will more likely lead to peace and a non-nuclear Iran. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re not.

I guess you’re not reading Conan’s posts.

Oh you mean us not supporting EU expansionism but instead work with Russia to lead to long term peace.

Europe bad, Russia good :face_vomiting:

Are you denying that EU used us for their expansionism?

Yes or no?

Hmm.

So aircraft are kinda sorta fungible. I guess so, nearky all products have some sort of substitute and thus some fungibility.

Russia is not interested in peace with the West in the slightest