[noir]

@Deutschmania it all depends if Germany will still protect and give moral support for the Islamic Republic, without it, the protestors can not do much. Iran become stronger because of German led EU policy.

Europe’s deafening silence

Eldad Beck

It took until Tuesday evening for Federica Mogherini, the European Union's senior representative for foreign affairs, to break her silence on the mass protests against the Iranian regime. Mogherini, who wastes no time when it comes to responding to every announcement on the expansion of Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria, found it fitting to wait until demonstrators began to clear out of city streets out of fear of a violent response by the Revolutionary Guards before she called on "all concerned" in Iran to abstain from violence and said the killing of dozens of protesters at the hands of Iranian forces was "unacceptable."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel also remained silent for far too long. Her spokesman waited until Wednesday to express admiration for the bravery of the people taking to Tehran's streets to express their financial and political concerns. By the time the statement was issued, protests against the mullah regime had already subsided.

French President Emmanuel Macron was slightly more energetic in his approach. Macron called Iranian President Hassan Rouhani directly to express his concern for the number of protesters killed and the violation of the freedom of expression. He also decided to postpone a visit by Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif that had been scheduled for this week.

The timing of the popular uprising in Iran may have been less than convenient for the Europeans, as it coincides with the holiday season, but this was not the only reason for their silence: Their reaction was muted because the protests across Iran served to shatter the Europeans' central argument in their defense of the nuclear deal with Tehran. The nuclear agreement, which the EU sees as its greatest achievement, was justified by arguing that should Rouhani and the "moderates" around him not be able to present the deal to the Iranian people, a deal that would lift international sanctions, improve the economy, contribute to the welfare of the population and preserve that nation's dignity, the path would be paved for the "extremists" to return to power.

This desire to keep the "moderates" in power led the Europeans to shut their eyes to Tehran's advancement of its ballistic missile program, Iranian efforts to undermine Middle East stability and its continuing human rights violations. But it is against the policies of these so-called moderates – the darlings of Europe, that the masses have now come out to demonstrate. It is possible that the Europeans will now argue for more open economic policies toward Iran and the removal of obstacles they still believe will spare the "moderates" from the wrath of the people and prevent the strengthening of the "extremists." There are already those comparing the most recent wave of protests to the student protests of 1999, which undermined the position of Iran's then-"moderate" President Mohammad Khatami.

Then as now, silence does not help the masses in Iran, who expect the European Union to be loyal not to its historical hypocrisy and economic calculations but to its founding principles.

http://honestlyconcerned.info/links/eld ... ael-hayom/

[noir]

Basically, the point of my post is that Muslims are human beings with diverse sets of opinions and beliefs.

@noir

Noir, Iranians aren't anti-Islam. A majority of the population is Muslim. I love how conservatives here are trying so hard to push the narrative that Iranians aren't Muslim, that they're anti-Islam because if it got out that a majority of the Iranian population is Muslim, this would ruin the narrative that all Muslims are bad.

Noir, why won't you admit that not all Muslims are authoritarian evil people? Honestly this is proof that many Muslims are good people who don't want Sharia law or a Caliphate.

@noir

Yes. That's exactly that. So exactly why are you trying to impose the narrative that they aren't Muslims? This post shows that you do realize that Iranians are a majority Muslim society and that not all Muslims want a global Caliphate. You know that many Muslims support and are fighting for secularism and democracy and not just in Iran. You saw it in Egypt, you saw it with the Kurds in Syria, and you saw it in Turkey.

So why Noir. Why are you so feverantly not just anti-Islam, but anti-Muslim? You're self-aware Noir and the fact that you are aware that not all Muslims are evil somewhat proves my hypothesis that you are underage and surrounded by a culture that has conservative opinions and that you believe in them not because of your own thoughts but because that was the dogma you grew up with, it's the sets of beliefs that you've been told to agree with. I think that, in a couple of years, when you finally get out of your community and go to college or something, you'll be given a chance to breath and finally be able to form your own unique and original thoughts.

@Oxymandias, you see things in very personal and emotive way which is natural. Recall the motivating role of self-esteem as a theoretical primitive in social identity theory. Even if I'll meet only good Muslims, or will marry with one, what it has to do with the gathering clouds in our civilization? To take it as "part and parcel" of living in our multicultural cities? No, you have to call a spade a spade, and Islamism with a sneaky backing of oil bribed MSM and academy is the new fascism that threat our future.

[Oxymandias]

@noir

I deal with others in personal and emotional ways as a form of persuasion. By being emotional and personal in regards to others you make them in turn feel important and happy. My worldview is as impersonal as it can be.

I don't seem to understand your post. I see that you think Islamism is the new fascism but I disagree. While Islamism is fascist, it is not as popular nor as wide reaching as fascism was during the early 20th century. Islamism will and always will be a product of the Middle East and will stay in the Middle East. You won't find it anywhere else. Your conception of fascism and Islamism is blurred by the media you view and digest and thus it is understandable that you think of Islamism as a powerful entity because the media you consume portrays it as an all-powerful entity capable of destruction.

In actuality, Islamism is a fringe movement. It's quickly dying away, even in the ME. The only people who focus so much on it now are right-wing and conservative media who need to focus on it because it's such a money-maker. Welcome to the outside world noir, it's not horrible and evil with the right being the only pure ones left, it doesn't make sense or is easily understood. It's complicated noir, very very complicated.

Also the "Clash of Civilizations" theory is completely false. It's been prove false by the political science community several times actually.

[noir]

One of the bizarre phenomenon of out time is the green (Islam) red alliance. The left doesn't know how to treat the protests.

[skinster]

^ That tweet that's pretending to be Corbyn is a fake account, obviously.

French President Emmanuel Macron has accused the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia of instigating a war as their mutual foe, Iran, was rocked by a week of protests.

[Ter]

@Oxymandias
@anasawad

I came across this article about Iran.
I am aware that it is probably a very biased source but still, a number of elements brought up in the article, like the scarcity of water, high youth unemployment, and so on, they are either true or not. I would like to hear from our Iran experts...

The Norm Is NOT Democracy -- the Norm Is Extinction
Before we wax too eloquent about the democratic aspirations of the great Iranian people, we should keep in the mind that the most probable scenario for Iran under any likely regime is a sickening spiral into poverty and depopulation. Iran has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world, indeed, the fast-aging population of any country in history. It has the highest rate of venereal disease infection and the highest rate of infertility of any country in the world. It has a youth unemployment rate of 35% (adjusted for warehousing young people in state-run diploma mills). And worst of all, it has run out of water.

We might be observing the birth of Iranian democracy in the protests of the past few weeks, but it is more likely that we are watching the slow-motion train wreck of a once-great nation in all its gory detail. As I noted in an Asia Times analysis this morning, the most violent protests, e.g. the burning of a police station near Isfahan captured on this video, happened in the boondocks where water has run out. The river that runs through Isfahan, a legendary city of gardens in the desert, literally has run dry. Some Iranian officials warn that tens of millions of Iranians will have to leave their homes for lack of water. The country has used up 70% of its groundwater and its literally drying up major rivers to maintain consumption. It's the worst ecological disaster in modern history.

The Islamic Revolution presided over an orgy of corruption, brutality, and mismanagement. Despite the Obama administration's cash infusion and the lifting of sanctions on oil exports, the government is nearly bankrupt. It has allowed several major banks to fail, wiping out the savings of millions of depositors, after the banks lent vast sums to regime cronies for real estate speculation. Forty-five percent of Iranian bank loans are toxic and the cost of cleaning up the bank mess is estimated at half of GDP (to put that in perspective, the U.S. Treasury set aside $700 billion, or 1/20th of U.S. GDP, to bail out the banks in 2008, and needed only a fraction of it. The Iranian banking crisis is a full order of magnitude worse than the U.S. 2008 crisis).

Iran's pension funds, as I report in Asia Times, are bankrupt. The civil service pension fund has only 100 employees paying in for every 120 employees receiving a pension. The government is on the hook for the rest.

Add up the costs of dealing with the water emergency, the bank crisis and the pension crisis, and Iran is close to broke. And that's just the beginning: The average working-age Iranian today comes from a family of seven children, but has fewer than two children. That means that when the older generation retires, there will be fewer than two new entrants into the workforce to pay for the pensions of seven retirees. The demographic crisis hasn't hit yet, and when it does, it will be the financial equivalent of an asteroid hitting Iran.

In other words, Iran's exhaustion of physical as well as human capital may have pushed it past the point of no return.

Iran has plenty of smart people, and two of the best engineering universities in the world, except virtually all the top graduates leave the country. There probably is a theoretical way out of Iran's economic spiral, but no collection of Shi'ite mullahs is going to find it. The most likely outcome is that Iran will undergo economic and social collapse.

That, sadly, is the norm in human history. The democracy first practiced by the Greek city-state is exceptional, and classical Greece is Exhibit A for civilizational self-destruction. Of the nearly 150,000 languages once spoken on this planet, a couple of thousand are left, and 90% of those will fall silent forever during the next century or so. Sometimes the best thing you can do for dying civilizations is, don't be one of them, as I wrote in my 2011 book, How Civilizations Die.

This makes the mullahs all the more dangerous, like a bank robber with a brain tumor who takes hostages. I sincerely wish a happy outcome for the people of Persia. But we need to be prepared for a very unhappy one.

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/norm-not-d ... /#comments

[anasawad]

@Ter
To dissect the article in sections:

Iran has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world, indeed, the fast-aging population of any country in history.

Its not. Birth rates in Iran are stabilizing around a steady replacement rate, with the decrease in birth rates being due to rapid urbanization and industrialization. Same can be seen pretty much in every other country industrializing.

BTW, its still one of the highest rates in the world; that is, birth rates are still higher than most industrial countries.

It has a youth unemployment rate of 35%

It doesn't. Unemployment among the youth spiked in the last 2 years due to the introduction of new economic policies and the renewal of sanctions, however its quickly going back down. And it hasn't reached 35%, literally never did.

It has the highest rate of venereal disease infection and the highest rate of infertility of any country in the world

Also doesn't. Infact, Iranian population has one of the best rankings in the world in regard of health and prevalence of disease.

And worst of all, it has run out of water.

Also false.
The current problem is not the availability of water, but rather the distribution.
The recent disputes between various local entities is causing a large mismanagement in water sources and distribution which is causing the current crisis. The resolution is political.

The Islamic Revolution presided over an orgy of corruption, brutality, and mismanagement. Despite the Obama administration's cash infusion and the lifting of sanctions on oil exports, the government is nearly bankrupt. It has allowed several major banks to fail, wiping out the savings of millions of depositors, after the banks lent vast sums to regime cronies for real estate speculation. Forty-five percent of Iranian bank loans are toxic and the cost of cleaning up the bank mess is estimated at half of GDP (to put that in perspective, the U.S. Treasury set aside $700 billion, or 1/20th of U.S. GDP, to bail out the banks in 2008, and needed only a fraction of it. The Iranian banking crisis is a full order of magnitude worse than the U.S. 2008 crisis).

It is true that there is an economic and financial failure due to corruption at the current times.
Just as before, the solution is political and the reformist coalition is fighting for resolution.

Iran's pension funds, as I report in Asia Times, are bankrupt. The civil service pension fund has only 100 employees paying in for every 120 employees receiving a pension. The government is on the hook for the rest.

Add up the costs of dealing with the water emergency, the bank crisis and the pension crisis, and Iran is close to broke. And that's just the beginning: The average working-age Iranian today comes from a family of seven children, but has fewer than two children. That means that when the older generation retires, there will be fewer than two new entrants into the workforce to pay for the pensions of seven retirees.

Even if the government went broke (it is indeed in the realm of going bankrupt), it will be bailed out by the tribes. That already happened twice before now where the tribes, and more specifically imperial dynasties within those tribes (most notable are the Timurs and Osmanis) bailed out the government and the economy before a full meltdown due to market and regulatory failures incited by political conflict in the country starting mainly in the late 90s.

The demographic crisis hasn't hit yet, and when it does, it will be the financial equivalent of an asteroid hitting Iran.

There is no demographic crisis in Iran.

In other words, Iran's exhaustion of physical as well as human capital may have pushed it past the point of no return.

Iran's resources both human and material are no where near exhausted. And the point of no return to what ? Collapse ? You mean the same point of no return western media has been talking about Iran crossing throughout the past 2 decades ?

Iran has plenty of smart people, and two of the best engineering universities in the world, except virtually all the top graduates leave the country.

Actually Iran is a net imported of scientists. That is, more scientists and experts go into Iran every year than leave it.
This is due to the massive expansion of not only universities but also space agencies and industries as well as various research facilities in all sorts of fields with the nuclear science field witnessing the largest expansion.

That, sadly, is the norm in human history. The democracy first practiced by the Greek city-state is exceptional, and classical Greece is Exhibit A for civilizational self-destruction. Of the nearly 150,000 languages once spoken on this planet, a couple of thousand are left, and 90% of those will fall silent forever during the next century or so. Sometimes the best thing you can do for dying civilizations is, don't be one of them, as I wrote in my 2011 book, How Civilizations Die.

Irrelevant bullshit.

This makes the mullahs all the more dangerous, like a bank robber with a brain tumor who takes hostages. I sincerely wish a happy outcome for the people of Persia. But we need to be prepared for a very unhappy one.

More bullshit.

He wants to see "the death of a civilization", all anyone needs to do is look at western civilization in the past several decades.

[noir]

These Iranian kids lost the fear or they are Kurds and don't feel any loyality to Iran to begin with?

[anasawad]

Azzaris most likely.

[skinster]

This was informative: podcast: Understanding Iran's protests, and the dangers of foreign meddling, with Mazda Majidi

[noir]

“Death judge (Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi) in iran , luxury patient in germany". He executed children. Recall Germany is paying billions on Palestinian "Apartheid", a term used by German foreign minister himself, Sigmar Gabriel.

Germany urged to abandon its support of Iran's mullah regime

While tens of thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in protest, the German government is taking heat for what some are calling its pro-regime policy in Iran, and its decision to allow sanctuary and medical treatment for an alleged mass murderer from the Islamic Republic.

“The nationwide protests against the Islamist mullah regime in Iran make it obvious that the federal government’s Iran policy has reached a dead end,” said a statement from Ulrike Becker, a spokesperson for the German-based STOP THE BOMB campaign. “For decades, Germany’s Iran policy has supported an Islamist dictatorship that today can only be upheld with utmost violence against its own people.

“We demand an end of the collaboration with a terror-spreading regime which is rejected internally and externally, by the people of Iran and by Iran's neighbors. We expect clear political support of the demands for freedom and democracy in Iran.”

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, a zealous supporter of the controversial 2015 Iran nuclear deal, waited days before wading gingerly into the issue of the mass demonstrations. “We appeal to the Iranian government to respect the rights of the demonstrators to assemble and to peacefully raise their voices,” he said, adding, “After the confrontations of recent days, it is all the more important that all sides refrain from violent actions.”

Gabriel, considered one of the most pro-Iranian figures within the 28-member European Union, led a large business delegation to Tehran just days after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action – the formal name for the nuclear deal – was reached. A year later, he traveled with a second group of company representatives to promote German trade.

In 2017, Gabriel hosted Hamidreza Torabi,who heads the Islamic Academy of Germany – part of the Iranian regime-owned Islamic Center of Hamburg – and who has called for the destruction of the Jewish state.

German-Iranian relations span many fields, and have raised questions about Chancellor Angela Merkel’s commitment to combating Islamic extremism and promoting democracy. A spokesman for Merkel confirmed on Wednesday that “Germany is still one of the most important trade partners of Iran." Exports to Iran in 2016, the most recent year for data, totaled more than three billion dollars.

The mass circulation Bild newspaper reported in December that the German government also provides about $400,000 to a pro-Iranian regime umbrella organization as part of a program to counter extremism. The money for the Shi’ite communities of Germany (IGS) is designed to promote “deradicalization” and “prevent extremism.”

But a 2016 Hamburg intelligence agency report, which monitors threats to Germany’s democracy, includes a reference to the IGS and a number of its members' organizations, including the Islamic Center of Hamburg. The German government classifies the Shi’ite umbrella group as “influenced by extremism.”

Fathiyeh Naghibzadeh, a founding member of STOP THE BOMB, on Jan. 1 called on Merkel and Gabriel to “take a clear stance against the dictatorship in Iran, and support the freedom-loving people. Silence or even support of the mullahs will isolate Germany and Europe in the region and worldwide.”

The dissident added, “In 2009, the West abandoned millions of Iranian people who demonstrated for months against the fundamentalist dictatorship. It has been claimed that only the middle class has demonstrated, while poor people still supported the Islamist system. Now the uprising has started in the provinces, and the slogans of the poor against the fundamentalists are even more radical.”

In response to Fox News questions about Germany's alleged pro-Iran regime foreign policy, a spokesman for the Merkel administration cited a Jan. 3 briefing that the government said it is closely "watching what is happening on the ground" in Iran because the "situation remains unclear."

The spokesman at the briefing added that an "improvement in the human rights situation is an important concern." The Merkel administration acknowledged human rights have not improved under the tenure of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani.

In addition to trade, Germany’s intelligence community has ties with counterparts in Iran. In 2016, Klaus-Dieter Fritsche, a German state secretary responsible for intelligence, met with Iran's top spy and cleric, Mahmoud Alavi.

Meanwhile, in the German state of Lower Saxony, the medical treatment of Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, the former head (1999-2009) of Iran’s infamous justice ministry, has stirred controversy, and prompted referral to the public prosecutor after a public letter calling for him to be “charged and condemned for his crimes against humanity.” The case is currently being investigated.

It was under Shahroudi’s watch as justice minister that adolescents were executed, political and human rights activists were arbitrarily arrested, prisoners were tortured and reform newspapers were closed. Shahroudi is a loyal follower of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and is regarded by some as a possible successor. He was also a student of Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Volker Beck, a Middle East expert and former Green Party lawmaker, tweeted to his nearly 90,000 followers, “A mass murderer enjoys German medicine and humanitarian protection?”

Queries to Dr. Madjid Samii, the president of the International Neuroscience Institute in Hannover, where Shahroudi is being treated, were not immediately returned. Samii traveled with the German foreign minister to Iran, as part of his 2015 business delegation.

http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/01/06 ... egime.html

[SolarCross]

The missus tells me that lots of university students have been arrested and many have died in custody (the authorites are saying "suicide" if you believe that, suicide by basiji maybe).

also..

free internet for iran petition to Trump

[noir]

The missus tells me that lots of university students have been arrested and many have died in custody (the authorites are saying "suicide" if you believe that, suicide by basiji maybe).

also..

free internet for iran petition to Trump

Maybe she quote fake news that dramatize the events? Can't believe they can succeed without going after the powers who give the regime legitimacy.

[SolarCross]

Maybe she quote fake news that dramatize the events? Can't believe they can succeed without going after the powers who give the regime legitimacy.

Not sure what you mean by that. She was just looking at social media feeds shared by family members in Iran. There are vast numbers of people camping outside Iran's notorious Evin prison waiting for word about their children who have been arrested by the regime. Apparently some of the parents have been waiting outside the prison for 10 days straight. Lots of people have been told their children commited suicide in while custody. There have been scuffles outside the prison too as police beat up on the families waiting outside.

[noir]

Who knows. Can be true can be not. Even if there will be tens of thousands deaths, the regiem can dish it. It all depends on the international Power who back it. Assad is still on the power because Putin. Iran has the support of Germany.

[noir]

German Iranian axis. German authorities helped Shahroudi to flee

‪https://twitter.com/pmt1357/status/951723001430626304‬

Shahroudi leaves Germany behind, but not the allegations

Reuters cited sources claiming that Shahroudi left Germany for Iran midday on Thursday, January 11, after receiving medical treatment, despite urgent requests from Iranian human rights groups to detain him. The federal prosecutor's office in Berlin responded by reiterating its commitment to investigating the complaints. A spokeswoman for the prosecutor's office told Reuters:

We will continue to examine on a legal basis whether Mr. Shahroudi was guilty of crimes against humanity, regardless of where he is staying.

https://globalvoices.org/2018/01/11/whi ... -humanity/

[noir]

Germany is the key to knock down the Iranian house of cards

Europe’s intractable hypocrisy

Eldad Beck


In 2003, shortly after the Iranian opposition revealed the existence of Tehran's covert nuclear program, three global powers – Germany, France and the U.K. – enlisted their efforts, along with then-EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana, to persuade Iran to abandon its atomic aspirations. The Europeans called those negotiations, which lasted for three years, "critical discourse."

What that meant, cynics quipped, was that the Europeans and Iranians were sitting down together to criticize the United States. It goes without saying that those talks ended in abject failure: The Iranians signed agreements with the Europeans, but violated them even before the ink had dried. We should have expected the Europeans to learn from their inability to cope with Iranian guile, but the Europeans excel at constantly recycling their mistakes and failures.

One day before U.S. President Donald Trump's crucial decision on the future of the Iran nuclear agreement, which would have fulfilled his promise to rip that "bad deal" to shreds, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif flew to Brussels for a meeting with the current iteration of the "three plus one forum" – in other words, with his counterparts from Europe's three prominent powers and the EU. Instead of being reprimanded for the deadly and violent suppression of popular protests against the Iranian government, for the Islamic republic's ongoing development of its ballistic missile program and for its expanding involvement in undermining stability in the Middle East, the four foreign ministers gave Iran and the nuclear deal their complete support and forced Trump into a corner. The crux of their joint statement following the meeting with Zarif: Iran is fully complying with the nuclear deal; thus there is no reason to impose new economic sanctions or to refuse to lift old ones, as the agreement stipulates.

German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel went as far as saying that Europe and Iran want to protect the nuclear deal from any decision that jeopardizes it. While Gabriel was defending the Iranian regime in Brussels, German authorities were busy smuggling prominent regime figure Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, in the midst of a complex medical procedure, out of a German hospital back to Iran.

Shahroudi headed Iran's judiciary from 1999 to 2009. During that time he allegedly carried out more than 2,000 executions, including of adolescents, while overseeing the torture of prisoners and arrests of political and human rights activists. After Iranian dissidents exposed his hospitalization in Germany, complaints were filed with local police to arrest him. The German government, which facilitated Shahroudi's arrival in the country "under the cover of darkness," also took pains to return him home safely.

Sigmar Gabriel was the first senior Western official who rushed to visit Iran, even before the nuclear deal was approved, to guarantee his Germany's economic interests in a country Berlin perceives as a historical ally. These interests are compelling Germany and the EU to support Tehran over Washington. "Universal and humanitarian" principles are apparently no longer a factor for the Europeans. Their support for Iran strips them of the right to preach morality unto others and makes them solely responsible for the development of an Iranian nuclear bomb.

http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/eur ... ted=224327

[skinster]

Trump’s State Department spent over $1m in Iran to exploit unrest
Documents reveal ‘regime change’ aspirations pursued under cover of ‘democracy promotion’ programs

[noir]

The Sky News's Kay Burley doesn't get what's wrong with Iranian nuclear deal that now Trump wants to reopen. A deal pushed by German financial interest in Iran.

Sky news, not the globalists BBC

[noir]

Trump is doing the right thing

Between an American rock and an Iranian hard place


Even though the European Union loves to present the Iran nuclear deal as a diplomatic success on its part and as a testament to its ability to play a central role in the international arena, few European officials believe signing the deal with Tehran would have been possible without the massive pressure applied by the Obama administration – primarily by then-Secretary of State John Kerry – to strike a deal with the Iranians at all costs.

It was America's insistence at the time that forced its Westerns partners – chief of among them the U.K. and France – to moderate their stance and place their faith in such an immensely shoddy deal. Germany, which has close ties and shares vast interests with Iran – looked on from the side – and the moment it saw the Americans amplify pressure to sign the deal they enlisted to Washington's aid.

The architects of the nuclear deal argued it would allow Iran to prove its peaceful intentions and reintegrate with the family of nations. Almost two and a half years have passed since the day the deal was signed and while the Iranians have perhaps fulfilled their obligations to minimize the scope of their nuclear program, they have also shown the world their unbridled aspiration for Iranian-Shiite hegemony in the Middle East by continuing to support terrorist organizations.

As for Washington, a new president is in the White House, and he clearly sees the disadvantages of this "bad" deal, in his words, with the Iranians. Trump has declared his intention to work toward amending the deal. He also set a timeframe for this purpose: six months, until the next deadline for deciding whether to reimpose sanctions, which were lifted by his predecessor, against the Iranian regime.

In European capitals, officials enjoy belittling and showing contempt for Trump, to view him as the "bad boy" of the West. But the Europeans cannot ignore Washington's clout or the consequences of cutting the Americans out of the nuclear deal. If they want to salvage the little they have achieved insofar as freezing Iran's nuclear program on a limited basis, they must take Trump's threats to veto the deal into account and examine where they can help fill the deal's many holes.

The Europeans also cannot blame Trump for Iran's belligerence, which is incessant: It has not stopped developing its ballistic missile program – which it will eventually be able to use to carry nuclear warheads great distances, even threatening European capitals; it is aggressively attempting to expand its sphere of influence in the Middle East – Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Yemen, Gulf states; and there is always the grave concern over what Iran intends to do once the nuclear deal expires, in around 7.5 years.

U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson noted this week a greater understanding in Europe's most important capitals – London, Paris and Berlin – about Iran's behavior and "holes" in the nuclear deal that require fixing. To this end, an American-European task force has been created to explore the feasibility of a collateral agreement to the Vienna deal, not only to address the West's concerns and to appease the American administration but to avoid having to bury the Vienna deal altogether. Indeed, according to assessments, a U.S. withdrawal from the deal will almost assuredly lead Iran to nullify its obligations and recommence nuclear activities.

The Europeans find themselves between an American rock and an Iranian hard place. Their ability to repair the damage caused by a messianic and obsessive American administration will now be put to the test.

http://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/bet ... ard-place/