President Emmanuel Macron of France failed to respond meaningfully to Iran’s failed 2018 attempt to blow up a conference in Paris. And facing Iran’s announcement on Monday that it has amassed more than 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium (the proscribed limit under the 2015 nuclear agreement) France is now refusing to take action to reinstate sanctions.
Instead, Macron is pushing the British and nearly always western-security-unreliable Germany to support appeasing Iran.
The Iranians smell the weakness and like it. They are pledging new escalation unless the Europeans provide Iran a way around U.S. sanctions. But the Europeans cannot give Iran this relief. To do so would risk their own businesses falling under U.S. sanctions — a significant concern, considering the European Union’s continued economic weakness.
European appeasement will also undercut tentative efforts by President Hassan Rouhani’s more-moderate faction to deescalate the crisis and draw the United States into a new nuclear deal. On the contrary, the Revolutionary Guard-aligned hardliners now have new motive to persuade Ayatollah Khamenei that the Europeans are running scared. They will push for Khamenei to authorize harsher action, more aggressive than that recently seen in the Gulf of Oman, as the best way into scaring the Europeans to back down further.
But that course will be a very bad one for Iran and regional stability. New aggression will only reinforce the Trump administration’s resolve to hold firm and bury the Iranian regime under escalating sanctions pressure — or, if necessary, to impose military costs on the hardliners.
France and its European partners are deluding themselves in their appeasement.
Watch. This crisis is about to get even more unstable.
