Europeans rebuff Trump call to abandon nuclear deal amid growing rift on Iran
The United States and Europe continue to be divided on Iran, with points of contention including how to react to the Iran protests and how the United States has doubled down on pressure after the Soleimani killing.
Leaders of three European powers on Sunday expressed continued support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, rebuffing an explicit call by President Donald Trump last week to abandon the troubled accord. The Europeans signaled that they could soon invoke a dispute resolution mechanism under the accord after a series of steps by Iran to reduce its commitments to the deal to protest the resumption of harsh economic sanctions imposed after the Trump administration quit the deal in 2018.
The European rejection of the American presidential demand marked the latest sign of a deepening transatlantic rift on Iran, as European hopes that it could broker some sort of US-Iran detente to get through the 2020 US election year without a new Middle East conflict fade. This has been exacerbated by differing Trump administration and European assessments of recent protests in Iran, including those expressing anger at the government in Tehran in the wake of Iran's admission that it accidentally shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 people aboard.
Trump on Sunday newly expressed indifference to the prospect of Iran coming back to the negotiating table, amid what analysts believe may be an informal Trump administration assessment that the recent Iran protests that started in the fall and resumed in smaller numbers over the downed Ukrainian flight pose more of a threat to regime stability than the Europeans — who have embassies on the ground in Iran — assess.
“National Security Adviser suggested today that sanctions & protests have Iran ‘choked off’, will force them to negotiate,” Trump tweeted Sunday night. “Actually, I couldn’t care less if they negotiate. Will be totally up to them but, no nuclear weapons and ‘don’t kill your protesters.’”
