Europe, U.S. Inch Closer to Taking Meaningful Action Against Iran

While Europe is slowly turning away from longstanding sympathies to the Islamic Republic, it is yet to take meaningful action to punish Tehran for its various misdeeds. President Biden can help by fully clarifying America’s position on Iran. On Wednesday the European Parliament recommended designating Iran’s top terrorist organization, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, as such. The resolution was influenced by the horrors inflicted on Iranian protesters by the regime, several acts of terrorism on European soil that appear to have had their source in Iran, and Tehran’s arming of Russia with suicide drones designed kill civilians in Ukraine. Like many in Europe, Washington is signaling that it has tired of negotiations with the Islamic Republic. Also like the Europeans, Mr. Biden is yet to announce a formal ending to his goal of renewing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. The European Parliament’s resolution, approved with an overwhelming majority, called on the European Union and its members to designate the IRGC as a terrorist organization, forcing Euroepans to freeze all IRGC assets and impose other sanctions.Only the Brussels-based European Commission has the power to designate organizations as terrorist. Like the Strasbourg-based Parliament, the commission’s president, Ursula von der Leyen, leans toward supporting such a designation. “We are looking indeed at a new round of sanctions and I would support also listing the Revolutionary Guards,” Ms. von der Leyen told the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, Tuesday. “I have heard several ministers asking for that and I think they are right.”Yet, another official, the commission’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, insists instead on pushing the same dead-end diplomacy he has advocated for years. “We have to do everything we can to make sure that Iran doesn’t get a nuclear weapon, and I don’t know any better way than the JCPOA,” Mr. Borrell said this week. One parliamentarian at Wednesday’s Strasbourg meeting, Hannah Neumann, took Mr. Borrell to task. “For three times now the high representative did not show up for debate with this parliament on the issue of Iran, despite the fact that he was in town,” the German Green Party member said. “I find it difficult not to interpret this behavior as a sign of disrespect to the Parliament.”In the United Kingdom, meanwhile, press outlets are reporting that London is set to join America in designating the IRGC as a terror organization. Anger in Britain is rising following last week’s execution in Tehran of a dual British-Iranian citizen, Alireza Akbari, and a recent MI-5 report on IRGC assassination plots on British soil. Like Europe, Washington is torn between holdouts who advocate diplomacy and a growing sense of anger over Iran’s human rights violations, arming of Russia in the Ukraine war, and assassination plots against American officials. Hopes of renewing the Iran nuclear deal are fading but have not yet disappeared. “With regard to the JCPOA, the Iranians killed the opportunity to come back to that agreement swiftly many months ago,” Secretary Blinken told reporters Tuesday. Yet, this week the state department’s Iran envoy, Robert Malley, reportedly conducted an unprecedented meeting with Tehran’s representative to the United Nations, Saeed Iravani.“We have the means to deliver specific and firm messages to Iran when it is in America’s interest to do so,” the department’s spokesman, Ned Price, told the website that broke the story of Mr. Malley’s meeting, Iran International. Mr. Malley’s message to the Tehran envoy could have been about the need to release American hostages held in Iran. It could be about clarifying America’s red lines on Iran’s nuclear program. Then again, Mr. Malley could also have offered ways to renew the JCPOA, or provided ideas on other diplomatic ways Iran could escape sanctions. Mr. Malley’s sit-down with the Iranian ambassador, which the State Department is not denying, was the first known face-to-face meeting of Iranian and American officials in some time. Tehran has steadfastly refused to conduct such meetings since President Trump walked out of the Iran deal in 2018. Because no details on its content were made public, the mere fact of the meeting conveys mixed signals about Washington’s intentions. “President Biden needs to give an Iran speech and set a clear Iran policy,” the policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, Jason Brodsky, told the Sun. “Ambiguity sets a lot of conspiracy theories, so America needs to be clear.”Washington, for one, could push Europe to rescind UN Security Council resolution 2231, which conferred a cloak of legality on the 2015 nuclear deal. Sources say that Britain is considering triggering the resolution’s snapback mechanism, which would annul the JCPOA once and for all.Despite such reports, and regardless of a growing pressure to designate the IRGC as a terror organization, decisive action is yet to be taken on either side of the Atlantic. The European Parliament’s resolution is a “welcome and long overdue news,” an Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, told the Sun. “But so long as Brussels remains oriented and animated by the JCPOA, it’s unclear if the move will sufficiently pave the way to change.”

Europe, U.S. Inch Closer to Taking Meaningful Action Against Iran

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