Last month, the Trump administration announced it would sponsor and organize a multilateral conference on the Middle East, a region inundated with problems as varied as the generations-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict to the diplomatic cold war between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. After getting considerable resistance from European governments about the event’s focus on Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo changed the agenda to include Middle East security more broadly.
The two-day conference in Warsaw, Poland, was designed to be an opportunity where nations across multiple continents could sit together and brainstorm ideas. Evidently, the meeting isn’t going as planned.
The Europeans are not at all convinced that Washington won’t use the event in Poland to bash Iran over the head. Federica Mogherini, the European Union foreign policy commissioner, will not be traveling to Warsaw. France and Germany, the heavyweights of Europe, sent lower-level officials to participate. U.K. Foreign Minister Jeremy Hunt will show up, but leave early. Realizing that attendance could be spotty, Pompeo was reportedly on the phone trying to coax allies into sending representatives. Frantic pleading for participants is not exactly a sign of confidence.
It would be easy to make fun of this entire affair and chalk it all up to the administration’s general sense of disorientation. Lord knows the Trump White House is a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants operation. But the fundamental reason for the conference’s less-than-ideal participation is Iran, a country everybody understands is a problem but one that continues to divide Washington from pretty much everyone else.
In Washington, Iran is the 50-foot tall boogeyman sponsoring terrorism, pumping arms into conflict zones, using American prisoners as bargaining chips, and chanting “Death to America!” The administration — stocked with people like Pompeo, national security adviser John Bolton, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook, and other anti-Iran hawks — view the solution to the Iran issue as bludgeoning Tehran with ever more stringent economic sanctions until it capitulates to American demands and acts like “a normal country.”
The Europeans have no love lost with the Iranians either. Just recently, the EU enacted additional sanctions against a branch of the Iranian intelligence ministry for allegedly organizing several assassination attempts against dissidents on European soil. On the core issues, the U.S. and Europe are generally together.
Where the dispute lies is how to address them. For the Trump administration, it’s about zero-sum outcomes: In order for Washington to win, Tehran has to lose, and lose big. This means a full, unequivocal surrender from the Iranians on virtually every issue under the sun, from ballistic missile testing and malignant banking practices to the spinning of centrifuges. In Trump’s world, it’s either my way or the highway; if Iran wants to export more oil, it better wave the white flag.
This is not how the Europeans see it. On the nuclear issue specifically, countries like the U.K., Germany, France, and Italy remain dumbfounded about why the White House would pull out of a nuclear deal that is keeping Tehran further away from a nuclear weapon, one the Iranians are complying with and the U.S. helped negotiate. The EU is so concerned about this decision that it established an alternative financial arrangement that aims to get around U.S. sanctions.
Obviously, Trump and his people aren’t happy about that.
This week’s Middle East conference could have been a chance for Washington and its European allies to mend the rift or to, at the very least, come up with a strategy everyone can agree with.
The opportunity was missed. It’s becoming harder to envision the disagreements over Iran mending unless the White House or European governments radically change their position.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
