France, Germany and the United Kingdom worked with the Obama administration to barter the United Nations-approved Iran agreement in 2015. Now, the three European signatories must figure out how to save that deal and continue working with a U.S. president who has mostly shown them contempt.
As a scholar of transatlantic relations who has followed the Iran deal for years, I am frankly skeptical that Europe can manage either.
Last-minute negotiations
The United Kingdom, France and Germany tried desperately to convince the U.S. not to withdraw from the Iran deal, which is a signature achievement of EU foreign policy that took a decade of painful diplomatic efforts to seal.
Since his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump has scorned restrictions in the deal that diminished over time, condemned Irans ballistic missile program and criticized Irans generally bellicose behavior across the Middle East.
In Europes view, the nuclear deal is working. The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed that Tehran has complied with the terms of the accord, halting uranium-enrichment activities and submitting to invasive international inspections.
British Prime Minister Theresa May asked Congress to stand by the deal in January. In late April, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel even traveled to Washington to personally urge Trump not to abandon it.
Their efforts came to naught.
How to save the deal
The remaining signatories Russia, China and the three European nations are now in flurry of diplomatic activity trying to salvage their agreement.
An American withdrawal endangers its survival because of the countrys sheer economic muscle. Trumps threat to impose the highest level of sanctions targeting both Iran and nations that do business there could easily make the deal unworkable.
The Iran agreement is essentially a quid pro quo. Signatories lifted sanctions, offering Iran the prospect of economic opportunities, in exchange for Tehran agreeing to scale back its nuclear program. If European powers cannot deliver real economic benefits, Iran may declare the deal dead.
[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="754"] Protesters react to Donald Trumps withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran. AP Photo/Vahid Salemi[/caption]
If that happened, Iran would most likely resume uranium enrichment. That step, analysts say, could trigger more violence in the already volatile Mideast a region just a stones throw from southern Europe.
Defending European business interests
In addition to re-imposing sanctions on Iran, the White House has given foreign firms operating in Iran up to 180 days to wind down business there or else be barred from the U.S. banking and financial system.
To protect European businesses from punitive U.S. sanctions, one option would be to revive and amend the EUs 1996 blocking regulation. That rule, passed after the U.S. Congress levied sanctions against Iran and Libya, shielded European firms from U.S. secondary sanctions by declaring them unenforceable within the EU.
The European Investment Bank could also consider providing smaller firms those without a stake in the U.S. market, say credit lines and financing to create a safer, more stable environment for doing business with Iran.
As Jeremy Shapiro of the European Council on Foreign Relations recently commented in The New York Times, Europe must now decide not if they stick with the deal but will they stand up to the American effort to unravel it.
European leaders could limit discord by appeasing Trump, while waiting out his administration. Europe remains dependent on the U.S. for its security. And, in any case, getting all 28 members of the EU to agree to take any punitive measures against the U.S. would be a tall order.
My best guess is that the U.S.-Europe relationship will become an increasingly loveless marriage.
These old allies will cooperate on a transactional basis on areas of common interest, such as counterterrorism and trade. But the shared world vision that has defined this partnership since World War II could very well be lost.