Not to bring this up again – okay, I’m bringing it up again…but this example demonstrates that Iran isn’t just recklessly escalating for the purposes of dick measuring. They know what they’re doing. They’re playing hardball, and they’re using counter-pressure, and it can work, provided they don’t get carried away.
Interesting. I see it more as an indication that Europe is becoming increasingly irrelevant. I mean, Iran has already ‘partially’ backed out of the agreement, has already passed the threshold limit that was set in the agreement Europe was trying to salvage, even while Europe was struggling to come up with a deal for Iran to stay in despite the US backing out. Iran thinks so highly of Europe and said deal that they essentially ignored it, since their besties Russia and China have their back. I think that’s because Iran can do basic math and can see that if push comes to shove, the hundreds of billions in trade between the US and the EU (not to mention that whole NATO thingy) is going to mean more than the few 10’s of billions of trade between Europe and Iran. Also, that because of both China and Russia, the US is far from the crazy irrelevant uncle you make us out to be wrt the Europeans.
Serious question. Do you think that the EU will continue to trade with Iran as they continue to increasingly breach the refinement limit? Or do you think that Iran will take the European lure and cut back their currently ramped up refinement? And what do you think the US will do in the first case? And what will the EU do in their own current economic straights if Trump decides to do something like what he’s doing wrt China? It would hurt the US, no doubt, and probably kill Trump’s re-election chances, if he even has one at this point, but it would REALLY hurt the EU for as long as Trump remains in power and probably for some time after that as the new administration tries to figure out how to unravel this mess and back us out of all the stuff he’s done.
That’s quite a hard one. Certainly Boris was doing whatever it took to get his current Iranian problem solved whatever it took. The EU though… they may well put sanctions in place if Iran continues to refine uranium. They will want to send a message.
What will the US do? Who the hell knows? Trump is anything if unpredictable. The US may embrace Iran. They may threaten to nuke them into glass. Trump may try to get a personal meeting with Iran’s leadership. He may call them insulting names. Who knows?
Yes, we’ll have to wait until someone who has some actual ability with diplomacy to unravel this clusterfuck.