Trump’s attitude toward Europe is clear: He considers the European Union a collection of puffed-up small countries dependent on the U.S. for economic survival and military protection. In Trump’s view, these little nations will always cave to pressure. That stance was conveyed by the imperious tweet from the the newly arrived U.S. ambassador to Germany, Richard Grenell, who ordered German companies that do business in Iran to “wind down operations immediately.” Grenell has since explained that the tweet followed “the exact language sent out from the White House talking points” on Trump’s decision to withdraw the U.S. from the Iran nuclear deal. [...]
There is little respect for Trump in European capitals, except, perhaps, in Warsaw and Budapest, which don’t call the shots on trade. French, German and U.K. politicians consider his presidency an aberration and a temporary setback. The current plan, inasmuch as there is one, is to outlast Trump and preserve all the frameworks he’s trying to break until the next U.S. president takes office. That’s the case with the Paris climate accord as much as with the Iran deal. No one in Moscow or Tehran should expect moderate leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel, President Emmanuel Macron or, especially, Prime Minister Theresa May, to suddenly turn anti-American just because Trump is in the White House. [...]
There’s no reason for Trump to count on weaker resistance today, especially since Iran presents a far greater economic opportunity than Cuba did. In Cuba, the biggest European investments were in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Iran, a country that holds 7 percent of the world’s entire mineral reserves, attracted $7.38 billion in approved foreign investment projects between January 2016 and September 2017 after taking in only $2 billion in 2015. Most of the new money is coming from China and the EU. Still, the U.S. sanctions could have deep consequences: If France’s Total, which has a big U.S. operation, is forced to pull out of Iran’s South Pars project, China’s CNPC, which is now Total’s partner, would likely take over. It’s not clear to the Europeans why they should leave the investment opportunity to the Chinese. Total wants the EU to fight its corner.
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