The thought of having to do something about stopping mullah-run Iran rather than looking away, making some trade deals, and counting on America (or Israel) to fix the problem when it goes off the rails in the future Europe pushes them to defend the Iran nuclear deal:
The European Union on Monday reaffirmed its support for a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers despite sharp criticism of the accord by President Donald Trump, and it urged U.S. lawmakers not to reimpose sanctions on Tehran.
Trump defied both U.S. allies and adversaries on Friday by refusing to formally certify that Tehran is complying with the accord, even though international inspectors say it is, and said he might ultimately terminate the agreement.
I must protest that the IAEA can't say Iran is abiding by the deal. All the IAEA can say is that in the limited areas the IAEA can examine, the IAEA doesn't see any evidence of violations. That's way different.
But let's recall the Russia problem. The Europeans have had to be pushed and prodded to deal with the Russian threat to Europe in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2014, which is ongoing.
Back in 2008, when Russia was much weaker, the Europeans wanted to avoid dealing with Russia and instead drafted a report on the Russian invasion of Georgia that cemented Russian control of portions of Georgian territory by essentially blaming Georgia for the war while only blaming Russia for over-reacting.
As I noted in that post, the fear of losing heat in the winter if Russia cut off gas supplies was no doubt a factor in obscuring Russian guilt.
And then we got the Ukraine War and continued Russian threats to NATO and Ukrainian independence. What goal was out of reach if Europe would not resist?
In response to that problem of Europe worrying about Russian energy blackmail, our natural gas fracking is providing a solution. And Russia knows it:
President Vladimir Putin accused the United States on Thursday of trying to squeeze Russia out of European energy markets, saying the latest round of U.S. sanctions was designed to force Europe to buy U.S. liquefied natural gas instead.
I see Putin reached into the "Well, Duh" files for that insight.
But we can only do so much.
We will get a bigger and more dangerous Iranian threat if we continue to follow European instincts to ignore gathering threats and declare peace for our time until the threats rub our noses in their aggressive intent and capabilities.
UPDATE: Europe has an ally to maintain the Iran deal--China:
China is expected to step up cooperation with European countries to preserve the Iran nuclear deal reached two years ago after US President Donald Trump indicated that he might decertify the agreement, analysts said.
China, as their long history with North Korea amply demonstrates, has already proven that it has no problem encouraging an anti-American country get nuclear weapons.
But if China has to go along with stopping North Korea before that approach unleashes a backlash on China by pushing South Korea, Japan, and perhaps Taiwan go nuclear in response, no doubt China would like a Plan B nuclear-armed nutball state to occupy America's attention.
The Europeans should be ashamed to step up cooperation with China to keep Iran on the path to nuclear weapons.
