Europe will cave to Trump's will on Iran, senators predict

Republican senators are predicting that President Trump will be able to force European allies to cut off investment with Iran through the threat of “secondary sanctions” imposed by the Treasury Department.

“The determination as to whether those secondary sanctions are going to be utilized will — regardless of what rhetoric may be out there — it will have a huge effect,” Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told the Washington Examiner.

Trump decided unilaterally to renew all American sanctions on Iran, giving various industries 90 to 180 days to wind down the deals they have struck since the implementation of the 2015 nuclear agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. European allies that support the nuclear deal have vowed to continue working with Iran’s economy in an attempt to keep the deal intact.

“Our governments remain committed to ensuring the agreement is upheld, and will work with all the remaining parties to the deal to ensure this remains the case including through ensuring the continuing economic benefits to the Iranian people that are linked to the agreement,” British Prime Minister Theresa May, French President Emmanuel Macron, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a joint response to Trump’s withdrawal from the JCPOA.

“If the secondary sanctions are applied, then that will have a very dampening affect on the remainder of the Iran agreement staying in place,” he said. “Because it will definitely affect European investment and their decision about whether they want to stay with the U.S. in that regard or whether it's worth it to them to be investing in Iran.”

State Department officials plan to negotiate with European allies, in the hopes of agreeing on a broader plan to counteract Iran that will preclude the need to use sanctions to isolate the regime economically. Those talks will be driven, at least implicitly, by disputes about the efficacy of the nuclear deal and an American belief that Europe is unduly motivated to invest in Iran.

“A lot of these countries, their overriding goal is commercial success; it’s not national security,” Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, told the Washington Examiner. “The Italians would throw their mother under the bus to get a good deal with Iran.”

Sullivan thinks Trump’s team has more leverage than Bush did, because of an “American energy renaissance” that has seen U.S. oil and natural gas production skyrocket. “We’re the hottest place to invest, in the energy sector, in the world. For an administration official to be able to go to a European energy company and say, ‘you have a choice, Iran vs the United States energy sector,' that’s powerful leverage.”

Still, that’s a “brute force” use of sanctions, as Corker conceded. Iran’s potential economic partners won’t fail to notice that American economic power is being deployed to force them into foreign policy positions that they insist damage their national security.

“I’m not saying it’s going to be easy,” Sullivan said. “All I am saying, though, is that if the Europeans are highly-motivated by commercial opportunities and advantage, the argument that’s now out there — that the United States doesn’t have any leverage — is wrong. We have a lot of leverage.”

https:// www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/europe-will-cave-to-trumps-will-on-iran-senators-predict