TIME’S UP FOR THE EU’S APPEASEMENT POLICY ON IRAN
It is time for the EU to pull out of the nuclear deal with Iran. The appeasement policy of the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs – Federica Mogherini – has been an abject failure, simply emboldening the mullahs to order assassination attempts against opposition figures in Europe and brazenly to fire ballistic missiles into Syria. Mogherini was one of the main proponents of the JCPOA nuclear deal, or Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, that was signed in Vienna on 14thJuly 2015 and involved five permanent members of the UN Security Council, including China, Russia, France the UK and the US.
Donald Trump railed against the deal throughout his presidential campaign and it was one of the first things he withdrew the US from after his election. Trump called the JCPOA the worst deal in history, pointing out that it led to the release of over $150 billion in frozen assets, enabling the theocratic regime to re-double its funding of Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Bashir al-Assad in Syria and the brutal Shi’ia militias in Iraq.
In October last year the US State Department published a 48-page report entitled “OUTLAW REGIME: A Chronicle of Iran’s Destructive Activities.” In a foreword, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo explained why President Trump had decided to withdraw from Obama’s nuclear deal, calling it: “a failed strategic bet that fell short of protecting the American people or our allies from the potential of an Iranian nuclear weapon.” He pointed out that Barack Obama’s deal had “plainly failed to contribute to regional and international peace and security.” In fact, he said: “Iran’s destabilizing behavior has grown bolder under the deal.” Pompeo said: "We are asking every nation who is sick and tired of the Islamic Republic's destructive behaviour to join our pressure campaign. This especially goes for our allies in the Middle East and Europe, people who have themselves been terrorized by the violent regime's activity for decades."
Mike Pompeo’s remarks followed a rash of terror events sponsored by the mullahs in Europe. On 30thJune German police arrested Assadollah Assadi, a diplomat from the Iranian Embassy in Vienna, and charged him with terrorist offences. On the same day Belgian police arrested an Iranian couple from Antwerp after 500 gm of high explosives and a detonator were found in their car. They admitted Assadi had given them the bomb and instructed them to detonate it at the Iranian democratic opposition rally being held in Villepinte, near Paris that weekend. President Macron of France declared his outrage at this attempted terrorist atrocity on French soil and imposed immediate sanctions on Iran.
Undeterred by this embarrassing setback, on October 2018, the regime sent another diplomat to assassinate an opposition figure in Denmark. He was also arrested and is now facing trial. Similar terror plots were uncovered in Albania, where the Iranian regime’s newly appointed ambassador and first secretary were found to be leading Ministry of Intelligence & Security (MOIS) agents, plotting attacks on the 2,500 Iranian dissidents from the People’s Mojahedin of Iran (PMOI) who have set up a compound near Tirana. Albania’s courageous Prime Minister Edi Rama did not hesitate. He announced the expulsion of both so-called Iranian ‘diplomats’ last December, on the grounds that they posed a threat to Albania’s national security.
Despite clear evidence that Iranian embassies in Europe were being used as terrorist bomb factories, EU lawmakers on 5thJuly 2018, less than a week after the Iranian diplomat from Vienna was arrested, approved plans for the European Investment Bank (EIB) to do business with the theocratic fascist regime in Iran, in a desperate bid to keep the 2015 nuclear deal alive.Europe’s leading appeaser, Federica Mogherini, has been a frequent visitor to Tehran, where she pays homage to the ayatollahs, on a recent occasion even donning a headscarf to offer submission to the clerical regime’s misogyny, then posing for selfies with the mullahs. Now she has decided to snub an anti-Iran conference organised by Mike Pompeo in Warsaw in mid-February.
But Mogherini’s efforts at appeasement appear to have fallen on deaf ears in Europe. It has been reported that a delegation of leading EU diplomats from France, the UK, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, had a volatile meeting earlier this month in Tehran. They told senior Iranian officials that the EU could no longer tolerate ballistic missile tests in Iran and assassination attempts on European soil. Apparently, in an unprecedented breach of protocol, the Iranian officials stormed out of the room, slamming the door.
Clearly the mullahs are now deeply perplexed. A state of total confusion has persisted ever since President Trump tore up the nuclear deal and re-imposed tough sanctions. For many EU countries, assassination attempts on their own soil were the last straw. Sanctions approved now by France, Denmark and the Netherlands and threats of further action by a widening range of EU Member States, have isolated Mogherini and her disastrous policy of appeasement. The time is right for the EU to follow America’s example and pull the plug on the nuclear deal.
