European intelligence agencies will partner with the United States to enforce an arms embargo on Iran, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicted, despite disputes within the alliance about the legal basis for that ban.
“We think the network will cooperate,” Pompeo told the Washington Examiner. “We think there is a shared understanding about the risk from the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
That understanding didn’t preclude a high-profile diplomatic clash between Pompeo and his Western European counterparts over the U.S. effort to extend a United Nations arms embargo scheduled to expire in October pursuant to the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. The disagreement led to the defeat of a U.S. proposal to extend the ban, followed by Pompeo’s unilateral invocation of the “snapback” of the arms embargo and all other sanctions waived by the 2015 nuclear accord, a move that European allies maintain he has no right to make given the U.S. withdrawal from the deal in 2018.
“It flows from this that any decisions and actions which would be taken based on this procedure or on its possible outcome would also be incapable of having any legal effect,” the top diplomats from France, Germany, and the United Kingdom said on Sunday.
Pompeo regarded that objection as more formal than substantive.
“The E3 has chosen to take a position that the United States didn’t have the capacity to snapback alongside a position that said, ‘We agree. Iran shouldn’t be able to traffic in weapons,’” he said. “I think operators around the world will see that the Europeans have taken truly a middle position on this. That is, ‘We like the outcome; we don’t like the process,’ and they’ll adhere to the provisions of the outcome.”
The European allies credit the 2015 deal with defusing a nuclear crisis, which they fear has grown more likely as Iran has moved to stockpile nuclear weapons materials and to stop complying with some provisions of the accord in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal. “We have worked tirelessly to preserve the nuclear agreement and remain committed to do so,” the E3 said on Sunday.
Iran has breached the caps on enriched uranium imposed by the nuclear deal, according to International Atomic Energy Agency officials. The regime allowed nuclear inspectors into a site last week after its attempt to bar the watchdog agency from two sites prompted a rare show of agreement by U.S. and European allies.
“It is unambiguous that the reason that Iran continues to be compliant with the IAEA is because it’s in their best interest to do so,” Pompeo said, noting that “no nation” subject to the Non-Proliferation Treaty had ever refused to allow such inspections.
“Iran, for many, many months, did. They drug it out, and finally, they relented,” he told the Washington Examiner. “They relented because of American pressure to continue to deny them resources and wealth. They had an obligation to allow the IAEA inspectors in. They need to continue to do that, and that requirement, that inspection requirement, exists regardless of the nuclear deal.”
The inspections dispute may have been a foretaste of the nuclear nightmare that European allies fear will come to pass if Iran responds to U.S. sanctions by racing to develop a bomb, but Pompeo’s team rejected the idea that the snapback effort makes that more likely.
“So, I don’t accept the notion that Iran was abiding by the letter and spirit and now won’t abide,” the State Department’s Elliott Abrams, the top envoy for Iran, told American and European reporters on Monday. “You may remember that the [U.N. resolution that implemented the Iran deal] calls upon Iran to stop its missile program. Does anybody believe they stopped the missile program? So, I don’t accept that Iran was abiding and that there will now be a diminished incentive. The only thing that is going to lead Iran to keep those commitments is, in our view, more pressure.”
Pompeo acknowledged that European allies have the capacity to impede the U.S. effort to enforce the broader U.N. sanctions if they choose.
“The snapback provisions are pretty broad in terms of what all is included, including financial institution issues and, importantly, arms sales as well,” he said. “And if you said, ‘What are the two places where there’s the greatest risk if there’s noncompliance if we don’t have European cooperation and compliance?’ I would identify those as the two.”
On the other hand, President Trump’s team singlehandedly deterred most European investments in Iran following the U.S. withdrawal from the deal, as sanctions threats convinced multinational corporations to follow U.S. rules even when European leaders remained faithful to the 2015 nuclear deal. And while Pompeo predicted that European defense companies and banks will “take seriously” the U.S. snapback of Iran sanctions, it’s also true that those companies will be bound by the European Union’s arms embargo on Iran until 2023.
Abrams told reporters that the U.S. would sanction countries that try to purchase weapons from Iran, partly in order to prevent Tehran from “trying to raise revenue by selling arms.” Pompeo suggested that U.S. and European allies will be able to partner in that effort, even if the political leaders never shift in their official disagreement about the legality of the snapback.
“These are Iranian attempts to continue to seed terror around the world and be able to have terror campaigns that are prepared to turn on on a moment’s notice,” Pompeo told the Washington Examiner. “I think intelligence agencies around the world see this. I think they understand the risk. And so, I think, as an operational matter, we’ll see excellent cooperation on these things.”
