How low can the EU go?

Unacceptable, unjust, appalling, barbaric, monstrous and shameful… this is how the world reacted to the execution of a France-based reporter that was hanged in Iran just four days after his sentence was passed. And yet, it took France and its European partners less than seven days to forget everything and plan for another round of talks with one of the world’s top executioners   writes Mark Williams -  former Member of UK Parliament (MP).   “You can keep doing what you do as long as you promise to be nice to us”.  Well, isn’t that an overstatement? Not at all.

No Western party in the 2015 Iran nuclear deal known as the JCPOA had the illusion that that was a perfect deal. Under fierce disruption from the Iranian side, the nuclear deal was evidently stripped from anything close to Iran’s ballistic missile program, terrorism strategy, meddling in the region and grave human rights abuses. Perhaps because these were problems of the Middle East and still too far from home?

Maybe… While intensions are neither judgeable nor measurable, actions are. As soon as the JCPOA was signed, the EU practically started treating Iran as an ordinary citizen of the international community and failed to take any action beyond the nuclear concern. And yet, the entire deal was based on Iran’s promise rather than an influence-proof verifiable monitoring mechanism. The final agreed terms of the inspection’s regime failed to include the “anywhere, anytime” factor.

Under the JCPOA Annex 1 - Nuclear Related Commitments, Clause Q. ACCESS, page 23, the language talks about “good faith”, careful enough not to pity Iran with “kept to the minimum necessary… and not be aimed at interfering with Iranian military or other national security activities”… Consequently, the deal was clearly keeping the door open for anything to put under the carpet of national security.

In June 2012, a U.S. security institute published new satellite imagery that showed "sanitization" and “excavation work” at the Parchin military site prior to the IAEA’s inspection. Then IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said satellite images indicated that buildings were being demolished and soil removed at Parchin, about 30 km (20 miles) southeast of Tehran. Also, in an unusually strongly worded statement in August 2015, Yukiya Amano expressed serious concerns about suggestions Iran would inspect its own Parchin military site on the agency’s behalf. Iran stressed its nuclear program has no military dimensions and declared the site off-limits.

On September 21, 2015, the IAEA Director informed the Board of Governors that one day earlier he had visited a suspect site within the Parchin Military Complex in Iran. Despite his assurance that the Agency’s verification processes were not compromised and that the Iranian side played a part in the sample-taking process by swiping samples, Iranian authorities and state media ensured their audience that “no (foreign) inspectors were allowed inside Parchin”, that “the sample taking was limited to only seven locations” and that “Yukiya Amano and his deputy’s visit was generic and ceremonial and they didn’t possess any equipment; not even a phone”.

Hence, the entire deal is based on Iran’s promise to keep the “good faith” and as they have always expressed that they don’t trust the West, how can you trust their good faith?

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Their actions are a deafening witness hereof. As US State Department Special Representative for Iran Elliott Abrams told a webinar on Dec 15: “We now know that the Iranian regime also preserved and hid a massive amount of documentation from its nuclear weapons program, while keeping many of its original weapons and scientists working together on dual-use technologies.  Iran’s actions give every appearance of it wanting to retain the option of bringing all these elements back together again.  And as Iran continues to expand its proliferation-sensitive activities and enriched-uranium stockpile today, it better positions itself to break out and produce the nuclear material those scientists would need for weapons”.

Based on the latest IAEA’s report Iran’s low enriched uranium (LEU) stock now exceeds by twelve-fold the limit set in the JCPOA. The Institute for Science and International Security hereby concluded: “Iran’s estimated breakout time as of early November 2020 is as short as 3.5 months. Iran now has sufficient low enriched uranium to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for a second nuclear weapon, where the second one could be produced more quickly than the first. Iran would require, in total, as little as 5.5 to 6 months to produce enough weapon-grade uranium for two nuclear weapons”.

The negotiating partner

Well, who are Josep Borrell and his European colleagues going to talk to?

In some Western circles, Mohammad Javad Zarif is appreciated for his big smile and is called “the Man of Diplomacy”. But Zarif doesn’t have a hard time to show his other side. Designated as a terrorist by the US State Department, Zarif has always highlighted that he is directly following orders from the supreme leader Ali Khamenei.

The “propaganda minister” proudly bragged on record that he held weekly meetings with the eliminated Qods Force commander Qassem Soleimani in order to coordinate policy. The Qods Force is responsible for killing thousands of innocent civilians in the Middle East, suppressing the Iranian people and organizing hundreds of terror strikes throughout the world. Zarif also proudly poses with Bashar Al-Assad, the butcher of the Syrian people, and Hassan Nasrallah, head of the terrorist group Hezbollah.

Zarif also leads the Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that has participated in all terrorist activities of the regime in the last four decades. European countries like Denmark, France, UK, Albania and the Netherlands have expelled a dozen Iranian diplomats in recent years because of their malign conduct.

An Iranian diplomat, Assadollah Assadi, is actually spending time in Belgian prisons waiting for a verdict of 20 years in prison to fall on January 22. He was caught red-handed masterminding a bomb attack on the annual gathering of the Iranian opposition NCRI held near Paris on 30 June 2018.

That might be an indication that Mr. Borrell and his collaborators are in no confusion who they are dealing with.

But Radek Sikorski, MEP from Poland, put it best: “I have a request to the diplomats from our nation states and from our European External Action Service. Next time you meet with Mr. Zarif, who is a smiling Ribbentrop, just remember what kind of nasty regime he represents.”

It’s the Western leaders who claim to be on the responsible side of the drama. For those, history might be a good teacher.

In the 1930’s, Neville Chamberlain was determined to avert another war. His policy of appeasement towards Adolf Hitler culminated in the Munich Agreement in which Britain and France accepted that the Czech region of the Sudetenland should be ceded to Germany. Chamberlain left Munich believing that by appeasing Hitler he had assured 'peace for our time'. However, in March 1939 Hitler annexed the rest of the Czech lands of Bohemia and Moravia, with Slovakia becoming a puppet state of Germany. Five months later in September 1939, Hitler's forces invaded Poland. Chamberlain responded with a British declaration of war on Germany. In May 1940, after the disastrous Norwegian campaign, Chamberlain and his accomplices finally understood that they made a fatal mistake and WWII made sure they did see how wrong they were.

The question remains: what does the Iranian regime need to do to be taken seriously?

About the author

Mark Williams - British Welsh Liberal Democrat politician, former Member of UK Parliament (MP) for the Ceredigion constituency (2005 - 2017)

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and are neither confirmed nor denied by EU Reporter.

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