Politico: Trump’s better deal with Iran looks a lot like Obama’s

At times, analysts and former officials say, it sounds like Trump wants to strike a deal that essentially mirrors the agreement that his White House predecessor inked — even if he’d never be willing to admit it. Iranian officials seem willing to egg him on, saying they’ll talk so long as Trump lifts the sanctions he’s imposed on them and returns to the 2015 Iran deal. And as European ministers warn that the existing deal is nearly extinct, Trump may feel like he is backed into a corner and running out of options. [...]

He’s said he’s “not looking for war,” wants to talk to Iran without preconditions and isn’t interested in regime change. He called off a military strike on Iran over its downing of an unmanned U.S. drone, overriding the advice of several top aides. His main public demand is that Iran not build nuclear weapons. In return, Trump has offered to help revive Iran’s sanctions-battered economy. [...]

Several European officials express astonishment at the audacity of the Trump administration demanding that Iran adhere to the deal when the U.S. the one who breached the agreement in the first place. Some said they were not surprised that Iran may have taken actions in the Persian Gulf as payback for the U.S. abandonment of the deal. 

Europeans “know that the original sin causing the current escalation in the Gulf is the U.S. violation of the Iran nuclear deal,” said Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. “At the same time, they are terribly concerned about the escalation and the threat it poses to the Middle East and to Europe itself.” [...]

Perhaps sensing this, Trump on Tuesday went out of his way to note that he didn’t want to oust the government in Tehran. “We're not looking, by the way, for regime change because some people say [we are] looking for regime change,” he said. “We're not looking for regime change.”

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Politico: EU’s Iran fight is not about Iran (or Trump)

Infuriated by Italy's induction into an expanded version of the so-called E3 club — the trio of France, Germany and the United Kingdom that helped negotiate the nuclear deal along with the European External Action Service — Spain has blocked proposed language on Iran intended for approval by EU governments. [...]

The Council conclusions aim to walk a diplomatic tightrope, by not raising any doubts about the EU's commitment to the nuclear deal despite the withdrawal of the U.S., but also holding Iran to account for a continuing pattern of military meddling in the Middle East and at least two recent assassination plots in Denmark and the Netherlands. [...]

The spat stems from an effort by the EU last year to address other concerns about Iran, including its role in wars in Yemen and Syria, without creating the perception that the discussions were taking place in the same format that led to development of the nuclear accord. The nuclear deal was brokered by the E3+3 — the EU, France, Germany and the U.K. plus Russia, China and the United States.

For the new framework, the EU established the E4 — adding Italy. But that move was seen by some EU countries, including Spain, as a bit of home-country favoritism by Mogherini, a former Italian foreign minister. Others saw it as an effort to appease Rome, which was annoyed at being excluded from the E3 while Berlin was included.

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Politico: EU plays hardball with Cambodian hardman

A decision to turn the screws on Phnom Penh would mark just the fourth time the EU has implemented trade sanctions for human rights reasons — Myanmar, Belarus and Sri Lanka having been downgraded in the past. [...]

There is every sign that Hun Sen will make a public show of strength, and only make discreet concessions later. Last year, shortly after a furor over his move to declare a rival party illegal, he even publicly dared the European Union to sever the preferential trade access. “Cut it!” Hun Sen said in a speech, declaring that he would not become a “dog acting only for a bone or a piece of meat.”[...]

In total, EU tariffs would affect 40 percent of all of Cambodia’s exports, incurring a cost of $676 million, according to government estimates. In 2017, Cambodia exported €5 billion worth of goods to the EU, the vast share of which consisted of garments, footwear and agricultural products such as rice.[...]

Facing the prospect of a humiliating loss, Hun Sen declared his primary political opposition illegal and had his main rival, Kem Sokha, arrested and spirited away to a remote prison on the Vietnamese border. He has also banned over 100 other opposition members from politics, shut down independent newspapers and threatened or jailed human rights workers.

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openDemocracy: Cuba and Europe getting closer

First of all, the concretion of an 18 million euros cooperation project on renewable energy, the very first to give actual content to the new bilateral relations framework, on an issue of special relevance for Cuba, which aims to include a significant component of non-polluting energies to its energy matrix, coinciding in general terms with the policy proposals of the EU in this area. [...]

The expressed will to promote exchanges for the European Year of Cultural Heritage and to support the celebrations of the 500-year anniversary of the founding of the city of Havana in 2019 - a request that historian Eusebio Leal made publicly to Federica Mogherini during her visit to Cuba last January, and which she gladly accepted – were among the finer topics on which decisions were also made.  [...]

The Cuban government, for its part, has expressed its wish for "a more active participation of the European Union in the economic development" of the island. The chancellor, Bruno Rodríguez, considers that the conditions are favourable for expanding ties further.

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The Atlantic: In Europe, Standing Up to America Is Now Patriotic

“Even mass media are talking about extraterritorial measures, sovereignty, and standing up to the U.S.,” Delhpine O, a French lawmaker with President Macron’s En Marche party, said at a panel discussion Wednesday at the Atlantic Council in Washington. She added: “And all of a sudden this becomes something of national pride, which I’ve not seen … for a number of years. We have to be careful with this because it will probably become a matter of public opinion … of sovereignty, or pride, of standing up to protect our own interests.”

Those two countries are also party to the JCPOA, and have signaled their intention to remain in it. But working with them presents its own challenges: Europe, like the U.S., views China as an unfair trade partner; and Russian actions in Ukraine and Syria, where it is involved on the side of President Bashar al-Assad, make Moscow an unlikely ally. Yet German Chancellor Angela Merkel has visited Russia twice in the past month—visits that prompted Russian media to ask  whether a thaw in relations was imminent. [...]

The most potentially significant response from Europe came Thursday when European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said the EC would work to enact a never-used statute that blocks European companies from complying with U.S. sanctions. That statute—the so-called blocking regulation—would make it illegal for European companies to comply with U.S. sanctions laws that have extraterritorial reach. But European officials have acknowledged that the blocking regulations have limited impact, and the U.S. reportedly is considering ways to ensure European compliance.   

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Politico: Federica Mogherini: Iran nuclear deal will hold

The Italian diplomat will meet with the foreign ministers of Germany, France and the United Kingdom — the three European powers that brokered the nuclear deal along with the EU, U.S., China and Russia — in Brussels Tuesday to discuss the future of the agreement. The European diplomats will also meet with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif.

Europeans are seeking to demonstrate that they can still deliver most of the economic benefits Tehran was promised in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons program and allowing a robust system of international inspections, as well as persuade European companies active in Iran not to abandon their deals out of fear of being penalized by the U.S.

In her speech, Mogherini took several shots at Trump, though she did not mention the U.S. president by name, saying: “It seems that screaming, shouting, insulting and bullying, systematically destroying and dismantling everything that is already in place, is the mood of our times. While the secret of change — and we need change — is to put all energies not in destroying the old, but rather in building the new.

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Bloomberg: Trump May Go Too Far in Alienating Europe

After the unsuccessful visits of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, to Washington last week, Trump has given Europe another month’s respite from punitive steel and aluminum tariffs. He expects European Union countries to agree to export quotas instead. Why the Trump administration would want that is anybody’s guess: Tariffs would at least yield some revenue for the U.S., while quotas would only result in abnormal profits for the exporters since prices would inevitably go up. But tariffs or quotas, it’s clear European leaders can’t get any traction with Trump. [...]

Then there’s the likelihood — confirmed by Macron after his talks with Trump — that the U.S. will withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on Iran. The presentation of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel on Monday was clearly meant to strengthen Trump’s resolve to do so. Netanyahu’s forceful way of making a point that doesn’t necessarily agree with the data (the materials obtained by Israeli intelligence concern Iranian weapons plans from before the deal) should appeal more to Trump than the German and French leaders’ measured arguments or top EU diplomat Federica Mogherini’s sober reminder that Iran has been fully compliant with its 2015 commitments. [...]

The favorability of the U.S. (the country, not the administration) is at 46 percent in France and 35 percent in Germany, according to the Pew Research Center. That was the lowest since 2008, when the reputation of the U.S. hadn’t recovered from the Iraq invasion and the financial crisis was gathering steam. No such momentous events are taking place now, but there’s Trump. Germans, according to a poll released last month by Forsa, one of the top polling organizations in the country, overwhelmingly consider him a greater danger to world peace than Russian President Vladimir Putin, and that’s the case even among the conservative supporters of Merkel’s party. 

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Politico: Macron needs the EU to bring peace in Syria

Macron has played a leading role in the military action against Syria; he claims to have had some influence on the posture taken by the U.S. and Turkey. But it would be hard to detect a common EU voice on Syria. Even the three leading figures of the EU institutional scene — Donald Tusk, Jean-Claude Juncker and Federica Mogherini — couldn’t manage to produce a joint statement. [...]

What’s needed to bring peace to Syria is a serious return to talks at the U.N. table. This will require EU-wide resolve — not just Macron’s national posturing — to bear down first on the United States, and second on the negotiations themselves. Adding an EU dimension to the talks would bring Germany squarely on board, help better manage Donald Trump’s unpredictability, open a channel for cooperation with Turkey and contribute to fending off Moscow’s influence in some European capitals. [...]

In the past 30 months, Russian President Vladimir Putin has achieved a lot: Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s survival, a large air base in Latakia, an expanded naval station in Tartus, and a new place on the world diplomatic stage. Now, Putin’s choice is between remaining a permanent spoiler or talking seriously to Western leaders about bringing peace to Syria.

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Social Europe: What Could A Corbyn Government Inside Europe Mean For The EU’s Future ?

The left-wing Portuguese government has demonstrated how an anti-austerity policy can dramatically improve economic performance. There are proposals to close tax havens for multinational corporations and a proposal for a common consolidated corporate tax, something the UK has strongly opposed in the past. [...]

The same is true for those areas where EU policy has, in the past, been relatively progressive – digital rights, climate change, and ending global conflicts, for example. Thanks to active protests across Europe, EU policy on digital rights, defending online privacy and the ownership of personal data, has been rather progressive – yet without continued active engagement, along the lines of the Labour Party’s Digital Democracy Manifesto, there is a risk that this might be undermined by anti-terror legislation. [...]

Finally, a Corbyn-led government could change the conversation about immigration. Anti-immigration sentiment promoted by unscrupulous politicians, it can be argued, produced the refugee crisis. We live in a world of migration and it is more or less impossible to control. What is more Europe with its aging population needs migrants. Instead of creating a border security complex in which smugglers and border guards are enmeshed in an impossible business that fails to prevent the deaths of thousands of migrants in the Mediterranean, we need a policy of managed migration as was actually proposed by the European Commission but opposed by member states – one that involves a resettlement policy across the continent. A Corbyn-led government could push for replacing  the current exclusive and dangerous securitised approach with one based on humanitarian and development considerations.  

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Politico: Italy can’t get no respect

“The French think of Italy either when they have problems with Germany, or when Italy has an election that could spell trouble,” said Marc Lazar, professor of history and political sociology at Paris’ Sciences-Po university and president of the school of government at LUISS in Rome. [...]

As the crisis rolled into 2012, Monti briefly gained traction and Italy enjoyed a rare moment of EU influence, as the prime minister bounced Angela Merkel into embracing plans for a European banking union, easier access to the eurozone’s bailout fund and the possibility for the rescue fund to aid troubled banks directly. [...]

With a population size close to that of Britain and France, Italy has long punched below its weight in the EU, chiefly because of a chronically unstable political system with frequently changing governments and a weak public administration. The vicious circle of neglect fuels instability and Euroskepticism, which in turn makes it easier to ignore Italy. [...]

Italians have never held so mamy senior positions in European institutions, with four of the 33 seats around the EU summit table: Italian Prime Minister Paolo Gentiloni plus Draghi, European Parliament President Antonio Tajani and EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini. [...]

And Macron has moved to repair ties with Rome. He settled the shipyard dispute with a mutually accepted deal and promised a bilateral treaty to build Franco-Italian cooperation along the lines of the 1963 Elysée treaty that governs the Franco-German partnership.

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The Atlantic: What the Iran Deal Can Teach America About North Korea

The North Koreans will be watching what happens to the Iran deal, and it will be every bit the test of American credibility that Obama’s famous “red line” crisis over Syria was. Obama’s failure to punish the Assad regime’s use of chemical weapons—after having declared their use a “red line” that would entail “enormous consequences” for Syria if crossed—was widely criticized, including in these pages. In his own defense, Obama dismissed the question of credibility in this context as “dropping bombs on someone to prove that you’re willing to drop bombs on someone.” That view does enjoy some support in foreign policy circles, with some positing that theorists and policymakers have fetishized credibility to such an extent that it can pull the United States into wars that aren’t in its national interest. [...]

Still, Haley is right in her assessment: Countries’ track records matter. Without some level of predictability, all international agreements would fall apart. Moreover, the failure to see diplomatic solutions through can put countries in a worse position than they were in before negotiations started. And in focusing on Tehran’s track record, she fails to consider what her administration’s own actions are telling the world about the United States. [...]

Today, America is facing a mischievous Iran, whose nuclear program was curtailed by the nuclear deal. This summer, the UN nuclear watchdog verified the country’s compliance with the agreement for the eighth time since its implementation started less than two years ago. The Islamic Republic remains a challenge in a number of arenas, including its human-rights track record, support for terrorist groups, and general regional activities, as Haley correctly noted in her speech. But as America’s allies and negotiating partners—France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, along with China and Russia—have stated repeatedly, the deal is working in its narrow aim of limiting Iran’s nuclear program. Haley said as much when she stated that “the deal was constructed in a way that makes leaving it less attractive.” In other words, while the deal isn’t perfect, alternatives to it are far worse. [...]

The United States shouldn’t make military or diplomatic decisions based solely on what will maintain its credibility. After all, credibility should be a means, not an end in itself. But the United States can’t continue to lead international processes designed to sanction countries and bring them to the table—and thereby avoid using force—without it.

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The Intercept: For Netanyahu and the Saudis, Opposing Diplomacy With Iran Was Never About Enrichment

“Enrichment is not important,” the ex-Israeli official continued. “What Israel needs to see from Iran is a sweeping attitude change.” The veteran Israeli decision-maker — himself a vocal opponent of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — explained that Israel could not accept the U.S. coming to terms with Iran without demanding that Iran come to terms with Israel. “Israel is not party to the deal, so it won’t be bound by the deal,” he warned. If Iran is not willing to accept Israel’s existence, then Israel will stand in the way of the U.S. reaching a deal with Iran, the Israeli message read. The Iranians in the room listened attentively, but showed no reaction. In a breakout session later that afternoon, they indicated that they could recognize Israel only if Israel joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-weapons country — that is, once Israel gave up its nuclear weapons and opened its nuclear program to international inspectors. [...]

The closed meeting, organized by a prominent U.S. university and held in a small Western European country, revealed dynamics driving the conflict that are rarely discussed in public: The Israeli fear that Iran’s rise in the region would be accepted by the U.S., and that it would regard Tehran as a legitimate player in the new regional order without Tehran accepting Israel’s existence. The most potent instrument for ensuring that Washington wouldn’t come to terms with Iran was the nuclear issue, which before the breakthrough in November 2013, was viewed as a hopelessly intractable conflict. “As long as the deadlock held, Iran would remain at least a permanently sanctioned pariah,” former Israeli official Daniel Levy wrote. For the years when the U.S. pursued Iran’s all-out containment, Israel “enjoyed a degree of unchallenged regional hegemony, freedom of military action, and diplomatic cover that it is understandably reluctant to concede or even recalibrate.” Israel’s position was directly linked to the U.S. upholding Pax Americana in the Middle East; its status was “underwritten by U.S. preeminence in the region,” Levy argued. [...]

From Obama’s perspective, the war in Iraq and the U.S.’s over-commitment in the Middle East had served only to weaken the country and undermine its ability to meet the challenge of prospective peer-competitors. With the Middle East losing strategic significance as a result of a variety of factors — including reduced U.S. dependence on oil — and with the cost of U.S. hegemony drastically increasing, the cost-benefit calculation for the U.S. had decisively shifted. To Obama, the Middle East was unsalvageable, and the more the U.S. got involved, the worse things would get and the more the U.S. would be blamed for the region’s woes. If Libya showed Obama that the region was best avoided, the rise of the Islamic State proved to him that the region could not be fixed. “Contrast that with Southeast Asia, which still has huge problems — enormous poverty, corruption — but is filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people who are every single day scratching and clawing to build businesses and get education and find jobs and build infrastructure,” Obama told The Atlantic. “If we’re not talking to them,” he continued, referring to young people in Asia and elsewhere, “because the only thing we’re doing is figuring out how to destroy or cordon off or control the malicious, nihilistic, violent parts of humanity, then we’re missing the boat.” [...]

While U.S. and Saudi interests were diverging, Riyadh found itself viewing the region in an increasingly similar light as the Israelis. Once clearly taboo, collaboration with Israel was increasingly discussed in the Saudi kingdom. For both countries, Obama’s deal largely resolved the immediate matter of the nuclear question. However, it did so by undermining their mutual core interest in excluding Iran from the regional order. The JCPOA addressed the pretext for Israel and Saudi’s tensions with Iran, but not the roots of their conflict. “By framing the nuclear issue as an ‘existential threat,’ Netanyahu enabled the sidestepping of broader worries that both Arabs and Israelis have about Iran,” Brookings Institute analyst Shibley Telhami wrote in 2015. After all, an existential threat supersedes all other issues; all else became secondary at best. In fact, the Saudis and their allies asked the U.S. not to discuss their top regional concerns with the Iranians in the U.S.’s bilateral meetings with Iran. Israel did the same, securing a promise from the United States and the European Union that “that a total separation will be enforced” between the nuclear file and other issues such as ISIS, the Israeli government minister responsible for the Iran file at the time, Yuval Steinitz, said. Later, both Saudi Arabia and Israel pointed to this division as a weakness of the JCPOA.

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Katoikos: EU Defence Union: The end of soft power?

Rising insecurity is becoming the new normal in Europe. Armed attacks in Paris, Brussels, Nice, Ansbach, Würzburg, Rouen, Berlin and now Manchester have brought to light the potential of jihadist groups both to recruit and strike within Europe. In the wake of the military conflict in Ukraine, Russia has repeatedly violated the sovereignty of neighbouring countries, intruding regularly on member states’ airspace and territorial waters. From the south, organised crime and unrest resulting from the Libyan chaos is spreading towards European shores. War in the Middle East is causing a mass exodus to Europe, while cyber terrorism is becoming more and more dangerous with each passing day. [...]

France and Germany are the two member states most eager to take advantage of these opportunities. First of all, because a European Defence Union is the living proof that every cloud has a silver lining: it is one of the things that is only possible in an EU without the UK. Moreover, for France, it is an ideal occasion to remind other member states that, with Britain gone, it remains the EU’s sole great military power. For Germany, instead, it is an opportunity to increase its influence in Brussels when it comes to appointing top personnel and to help the German arms industry in the markets of other EU countries. [...]

Some Eastern European countries perceive new EU defence plans as a challenge to NATO, which has recently agreed to station 4,000 troops on their territory and which is, therefore, considered essential to their security. “The European Defence Union does not mean duplicating what we have with NATO,” said Michael Gahler. He added, “We have difficult NATO partners who may try to bloc NATO resources. That’s why we must build up the capabilities to act independently.”

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Politico: A European Pentagon

EU officials raised its budget from €30.5 million to €31 million on Tuesday, an amount that pales compared to the Pentagon’s budget of more than €540 billion. Domecq said it reflected his agency’s job, which isn’t to supplant national militaries but  coordinate the efforts of EU countries to improve security and leverage scarce resources. [...]

Now, with the push to increase military cooperation — a step EU foreign and defense ministers agreed to on Monday — the EDA is expected to gain new relevance. Plans drawn up by Mogherini would give it a central role in boosting the efficiency and the capability of European defense systems.

The tiny budget increase approved on Tuesday is the first for the agency since 2010, though officials acknowledged it was more symbolic than anything.

And there are other efforts underway to potentially ramp up European military spending, including a proposal to establish an EU defense fund, which the Commission aims to outline at the end of this month.

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Politico: France and Germany hatch a plan to save EU

So far, the ideas haven’t been endorsed by Angela Merkel’s chancellory, where officials urged caution. Merkel, whose center-right alliance governs in a grand coalition with the Social Democrats, doesn’t believe such proposals can be rushed out or that they should be pushed without including all remaining EU members. Whether Europe’s Social Democrat leaders, who are meeting on Monday in Paris to coordinate their Brexit response, can push their agenda against Merkel’s resistance is doubtful.

The idea behind the Franco-German initiative is to focus cooperation on areas such as security, foreign policy, border control, the digital agenda, energy, transportation and eurozone governance, but shift other decision-making to national capitals. [...]

The overall goal is to try to play to the perceived EU strengths in foreign policy and security cooperation, giving it a more visible role on the global stage.

The EU’s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, touched on this new direction in the foreword to a new “Global Strategy” she will present this week to European leaders at a summit.

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