Saturday, 18 May 2019

Can European Union resist United States pressure to join war against Iran?


With bitter memories of the catastrophic war in Iraq, European Union (EU) members seem united in opposing the United States’ effort to provoke Iran into a shooting war. However, flat refusal to Washington appears a difficult decision for the EU members. Initially, Britain expressed that there was no enhanced threat from Iran in Iraq and Syria, but expected to change its opinion under the US pressure.
While Europeans were reluctant to confront Washington directly, Britain officially agreed with the Americans and Germany and the Netherlands suspended their troop training in Iraq. Germany subsequently said it was planning to resume the training exercises.
“Every single European government believes that the increased threat we’re seeing from Iran now is a reaction to the United States leaving the Iran nuclear agreement and trying to force Iranian capitulation on other issues,” said Kori Schake, a former Pentagon official who is now deputy director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “They believe that the U.S. is the provocateur and they worry that the U.S. is reacting so stridently to predictable Iranian actions in order to provide a pretext for a U.S. attack on Iran,” Ms. Schake said.
“It is different from the debate preceding 2003 Iraq war, which split Europe in two,” said Tomas Valasek, the director of Carnegie Europe and a former Slovak ambassador to NATO. “This is a case of all European governments saying to Washington that this is insane, we shouldn’t be here, and it’s your fault that we’re actually talking of war.”
The Europeans are trapped between Trump and Tehran, trying to keep decent relations with Washington while committed to supporting the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that Trump mocked and then abandoned. Senior European government officials say they believe that Trump does not want a major war in the Middle East, but they also believe that Bolton does. They often cite a New York Times opinion article by Bolton in 2015, when he said “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran.”
European officials are puzzled by Trump’s insistence that he simply wants to force Iran into new negotiations. Ms. Schake has rightly raised two question: “Why, would Tehran concede or even value any deal done with the president who just abandoned a nuclear deal so painfully negotiated with the last American president? “Why would they trust us now after Trump pulled the plug on the last thing they negotiated with Washington?”
The public position of European officials has been “maximum restraint,” that is opposite to Washington’s stated policy of “maximum pressure” on Tehran, including economic sanctions designed to block its international trade, especially in oil, on which the economy depends.
Foreign ministers, including Britain’s Jeremy Hunt and Germany’s Heiko Maas — have spoken about the dangers of escalation and accidental war. “We are very worried about the risk of a conflict happening by accident with an escalation that is unintended,” said Hunt.
Maas told German legislators that putting intense pressure on Iran added to the risk of an unintended escalation. “What has happened in recent days — acts of sabotage against ships or pipelines — are indications that these dangers are concrete and real,” he said, referring to reports that four oil vessels were recently attacked.
“The Iranians may have walked into a Washington hard-liner trap,” said Jeremy Shapiro, a former senior State Department official who is now research director for the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Iran as usual is sending messages and going up the escalator ladder one-eighth of a step at a time, through proxies,” he said. “They’re following the script. Iranian and US hard-liners have a toxic interaction and feed off each other.”
In the first gulf war, in 1990-91, the United States led a broad multinational coalition; in the second, in 2003, the European “coalition of the willing” was essentially reduced to Britain and Poland. Part of Europe’s skepticism is rooted in that 2003 war, when there were charges of fake or exaggerated intelligence, which continue to haunt the reputations of then-loyal European leaders, such as former Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and former President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland.
“Every European politician who supported George W. Bush was taken out and effectively executed,” Shapiro said. “Even in the UK, no way there can be a repeat of that. If the US policy is in force, there will be no European support.”
But the Trump administration — which has already strained relations with Europe badly through unilateral moves over trade, climate change and relations with Israel and Russia, let alone Iran — probably doesn’t much care what the Europeans think.
 US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo came to Brussels and spoke to European foreign ministers about Iran and American assessments of enhanced threat. For internal administration debates, European may agree to tactical support or face a bitter choice, “Either you are with us or against us.”

No comments:

Post a Comment