I think the left is absolutely, 100% right. We should let the Europeans run the world. They’re so much wiser than we are.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told the Europeans that unless they bought billions of dollars of Iranian oil, his country would further withdraw from the nuclear deal.
In comments to the Iranian Parliament Tuesday, Rouhani said Tehran would announce its third step to withdraw from the landmark 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Thursday unless France, Britain and Germany honor their commitments under the deal to buy Iranian oil, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported.
“If they fail to take any significant measure, we will definitely take the third step in the coming days,” he said.
The comments come amid negations in Paris over a bailout package to compensate Iran for lost earnings in the wake of the United States sanctions for its agreement to comply with the accord.
What did the Europeans do?
Leave it to our friends in France. When there’s surrendering on the table, France proudly steps forward, front and center.
French President Emmanuel Macron is offering a $15 billion bailout to top Iranian negotiators who arrived in Paris on Monday in exchange for Tehran’s commitment to returning to its landmark 2015 nuclear accord, The New York Times reported. The financial incentive is intended to compensate Iran for oil sales lost because of sanctions imposed by the U.S. since President Trump withdrew from the agreement last year.
The $15 billion letter of credit would give Iran the ability to receive hard currency while most of the income from its oil sales is frozen in banks. The money roughly equals half of the revenue Iran would get from oil sales in a year. Trump administration officials say the bailout would undermine Trump’s effort to put “maximum pressure” on Iran, the Times said.
This would be incomprehensible except the Europeans are deathly afraid — not of a nuclear-armed Iran but that if Iran gets nukes, they’d have to do something about it. From their point of view, it’s far more preferable to bury their heads in the sand and pretend Iran is a civilized, normal country and treat them on that basis.
Iran is not a civilized, normal country. And they are the mortal enemies of the West. Despite statements that Obama and the EU countries agreed to the nuclear deal because a “bad deal was better than no deal at all,” we’ve come to understand exactly what that means.
Former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren writing in The Atlantic:
The notion that diplomacy alone could transform Iran into a constructive regional power—oddly promulgated by the champions of multiculturalism—shocked Israelis and Arabs. Our dismay was swiftly vindicated as Iran harnessed the legitimacy and proceeds of the JCPOA to increase its financing of terror and hasten the spread of its influence across much of the Middle East. This expansion has already triggered deadly conflicts with Iranian-backed forces in Yemen and Gaza, with far larger conflagrations looming with Hezbollah in Lebanon and in Syria, where Iran facilitated the government’s massacre of hundreds of thousands of civilians and its displacement of millions more. The violence in the region is certain to escalate in the coming years, even if Iran appears to comply with the JCPOA.
A bad deal is a bad deal. But Macron and the Europeans want to double down on that idea by handing the terrorist nation $15 billion more desperately needed dollars. The Iranian economy is close to collapse — as it was in 2015 just before Obama bailed the Iranians out by handing them tens of billions of dollars. Now the Europeans want to repeat history.
How’s that working out for you, Manny?
Join the conversation as a VIP Member