It’s epitomized by a carefully unsigned piece in Spiegel Online, coming only from “Der Spiegel Staff.” After you’ve read it, you’ll see why the author(s) were too embarrassed to sign their names to it.
…Trump’s Tuesday announcement that the US was withdrawing from the nuclear agreement with Iran, one of the core pieces of international diplomacy in recent years….
Indeed it was. And it was one of the core pieces of failure in international diplomacy. Even the authors’ term “nuclear agreement” gives the game away. All the JCPOA accomplished was the codifying of Iran’s right and ability to obtain nuclear weapons—the “agreement” expires, after all, in a few short years; even were Iran abiding by it, after that expiration, they would be free to develop nuclear weapons with no further hindering from the international community. But we can’t even know Iran is abiding, since the “agreement” bars inspections, particularly of military bases, which is where weapons development occurs. The only inspections the “agreement” allows is of sites for which Iran will give permission, and then only after the inspectors say “pretty please” some months in advance.
Oh, and we paid Iran the princely sum of $140 billion—in cash—for the privilege of being snookered by them. American money, too, keep in mind. France, Germany, and Great Britain paid not a cent or a pence into that fund.
The risk [from our withdrawal] is very real that the move will worsen tensions in an already unstable Middle East and lead to an American-led war against Iran.
The instability is Iran’s doing, and no one else’s. See their recent unprovoked Quds Force attack on Israeli installations. See their use of their militias inside Iraq to keep that nation unstable. See their funneling of money and weapons to their client terrorist organization, Hezbollah.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was quick to threaten a return to industrial-scale uranium enrichment and few doubt that such an eventuality could lead to conflict.
We don’t know that Iran isn’t already enriching apace. See “inspections” above.
An attack on the Iran deal is an attack on the pride of European foreign policy.
This is risible. If Europe feels like its foreign policy is under attack, it’s only their hysteria getting in the way of their thinking. They’re united in their insistence, in the present case, on staying in the Iran nuclear weapons deal—the anonymous authors of the piece at the link brag about that.
She [EU High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini] then appealed to Iran to continue to adhere to the deal. “Stay true to your commitments, as we will stay true to ours.”
This ignores a basic fact: Iran isn’t in the deal, and it has made no commitments regarding the deal. Iran has not signed the JCPOA.
Trump has humiliated Europe to a greater degree than any US president before him. Macron fawned over him recently in the White House, Merkel swung by for a working lunch and British Foreign Minister Boris Johnson also made the trip across the Atlantic in an attempt to save the deal and somehow find some kind of a compromise.
Humiliated? Because our government, after listening very carefully to these leaders, decided no to do what they instructed him to do or asked him to do? This is precious snowflakery at its best.
In Aachen on Tuesday, Merkel essentially repeated the sentences she uttered last year during an appearance in Bavaria: “Europe can no longer rely on the US. It must take its fate into its own hands.”
Here is Merkel joining Mogherini in foolishness. Europe has been freeloading off the US ever since its economic and political recovery from the ravages of Europe’s roll in the wars of the mid-20th century. Ever since that time, Europe has been at least morally obligated to see to its own fate, and they’ve been shirking their duty.
The anonymous piece goes on in that vein, but you get the idea.
Europe must, indeed, see to its own future in accordance with its own imperatives. We’re happy to help them, and we’re happy to contribute to the political, economic, and military defense of Europe. But that’s not helped by, for instance, Germany’s toadying up to Putin in their snit over our withdrawal from a dangerously bad “deal.”
