Trump seeks support in Iran crisis but Europe skeptical

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Washington, Jan 9 (AFP/APP): With tensions soaring after he ordered the killing of a top Iranian general, US President Donald Trump publicly urged all other powers to abandon a 2015 nuclear accord with Tehran.

Within hours, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, one of Trump’s closest international allies, was on the phone with Iran’s president. His message? That, according to Downing Street, the nuclear deal remains “the best arrangement currently available.”

The January 3 drone strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, Iran’s most powerful general and a longtime US nemesis, has only exacerbated tensions between the United States and Europe in a showdown that has turned into a crisis.

But the episode could paradoxically offer a new chance for the Europeans to attempt what they have sought for three years — to broker peace between Iran and Trump.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a startlingly frank statement about allies for the top US diplomat, told Fox News after Soleimani’s killing that Europeans “haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be.”

Trump and Pompeo were infuriated by pro-Iranian Iraqi militias’ vandalism of the US embassy in Baghdad and rocket fire on bases housing US troops.

They said Soleimani was planning imminent attacks on Americans — a finding disputed by Democratic lawmakers after a classified briefing.

Tensions have steadily mounted since Trump in May 2018 withdrew from the denuclearization accord brokered by his predecessor Barack Obama and instead launched a sweeping campaign to cripple Iran, including seeking to bar all its oil exports.

Rachel Rizzo, an expert on trans-Atlantic security at the Center for a New American Security, doubted Europeans would suddenly change course on the nuclear deal after seeing the flare-up in violence, which included Iranian reprisals on Iraqi bases home to US troops.

“It’s pretty unfathomable to me that European allies are going to jump and follow Trump into this abyss that he seems to be sending us in,” Rizzo said.

With the goals of Washington and the Europeans sharply at odds, “I think there is going to be increased tension between the two sides and it’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she said.

Iraq PM says US strike threatens ‘devastating war’

 

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