Iran Focus
London, 19 Dec – Even since Donald Trump decertified the Iran nuclear deal (aka Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA) in mid-October and asked Congress to decide whether to reimpose suspended sanctions, European leaders have lobbied American politicians in an effort to save the flawed deal.
The JCPOA came about because the world leaders who signed onto the pact (the US, the UK, France, Germany, China, and Russia) were either confused, naïve, or complacent about the dangers posed by the Iranian Regime.
Now, the world is facing grave threats from the Regime but those still in favour of the nuclear deal are refusing to recognise the dangers (and that the Regime’s malign behaviour is the result of decades of appeasement).
It is dangerous for them to ignore that the JCPOA rescued the paramilitary Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) from bankruptcy and allowed them to become a “combat-ready force” armed with missiles that threaten the rest of the world.
US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley presented concrete evidence, on December 14, that the Regime was supplying the Yemeni Houthis with ballistic missiles.
She said: “These are the recovered pieces of a missile fired by Houthi militants from Yemen into Saudi Arabia…The nuclear deal has done nothing to moderate the regime’s conduct as it is hard to find a conflict or terrorist group in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprint”.
Now the nuclear deal has found its way back to Trump’s desk after Congress refused to make a decision either way.
Some proponents of the deal argue that tackling Iran’s destructive behaviour (expansionism, human rights abuses, terrorism) should be separate from the nuclear issue, but human rights and political activist, Hamid Bahrami disagrees.
Bahrami, a former political prisoner from Iran, wrote: “The efforts to save the deal without incorporating measures to change Tehran’s unacceptable behaviour will provide the Iranian regime with the three vital tools – land, weapons and money – to further destabilize its Arab neighbours.”
What’s more, even the Iranian Regime top advocate in the EU appears to agree. On December 1, EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini, who has spoken out in favour of the Regime multiple times, said: “What was wrong is the negotiations were limited to purely the nuclear deal-related issues.”
For EU officials who are concerned with Iran’s missile programme above all else, they should be doubly concerned with the way that the JCPOA has allowed Iran to advance its programme. It almost seems as if they are more concerned with keeping their jobs than keeping the world safe.
Bahrami wrote: “While the Iranian regime rules out any possibility of reversing its missile program, one should ask how the EU wants to persuade the regime to come to the negotiating table. The most acceptable answer should be “sanctions”. Indeed, it is naive to save the JCPOA, which provides Tehran with sanctions relief while at the same time impose new sanctions on the regime in order to persuade the Iranian clerics to respect international laws and UN Security Council resolutions.”
