RTThu, 14 Feb 2019 10:48 UTC
© Reuters/Kacper Pempel
Attended by over sixty countries but widely neglected by key EU nations, a controversial US-led meeting on Iran opens up in Warsaw,
raising doubts that European allies will play to Washington's tune when dealing with Tehran.
A summit to promote "peace and security in the Middle East" is officially set to seek ways of making the boiling region a safer place, but its primary focus is expected to be on Iran.
The meeting gathered a host of Gulf monarchs and other arch-foes of Tehran, including Mike Pence, Mike Pompeo, and Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.However, Washington's key European allies, including France, Germany, and, for the moment, the UK, have downplayed the importance of the offbeat meeting. Jeremy Hunt, the British Foreign Secretary, was in Warsaw to chair a Quad
meeting on Yemen but not to take part in the Iran summit.
France has sent a second-tier diplomat and Germany its junior Foreign Minister. Another notable absentee was Federica Mogherini, the EU foreign affairs chief, who helped broker the historic 2015 nuclear deal with Iran. Meanwhile, European press was largely critical of the event, with the
Guardian running an
op-ed piece saying it shows
"just how far [Trump] is from the rest of the West."
"What about the Warsaw summit, I think it's dead on arrival or dead before arrival," commented Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister. "It's another attempt by the United States to pursue an obsession with Iran that is not well-founded," he stated.
Comment: That European nations sent second or third stringers to the meeting could mean the primary leaders want to keep their options open. Is this summit a means to relevance? Perhaps not, but it serves to promote and reinforce group confirmation bias.
More from
RT 2/14/2019:
US Vice-President Mike Pence has demanded that Europe withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal and lashed out at the EU's efforts to evade Washington's sanctions on Tehran. Pence chastized Europe for leading an "effort to create mechanisms to break up our sanctions" against Iran, and complained that European countries had not been "cooperative" since the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran deal last year.
Pence said the EU's newly created Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), conceived as a way to continue facilitating trade between the EU and Iran, was an "ill-advised step" which would only "strengthen Iran, weaken the EU, and create still more distance between Europe and the United States."
In January, the EU unveiled a new transactions channel aimed at bypassing the SWIFT international payments system to circumvent US sanctions. The system, called INSTEX - or 'Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges' - has limited capacity and only allows "humanitarian" trade by focusing on sectors "most essential" to Iranian people like food, pharmaceutical and medical devices. While the EU hailed the mechanism as a way to preserve the Iran deal, critics say it won't change much as European countries still worry about US repercussions if they are "caught" evading sanctions and working in Iran.
Pence said that the US had been "a force for good" in the Middle East and claimed that Trump is committed to standing with "the good people of Iran and stand up to their oppressors."
See also:
I used to have a bumper sticker on my car around 2005, white letters on a red background, which said: "Be nice to America - or we'll bring Democracy to your country."
How many countries around the globe in the last 240 years have enjoyed the gift of Democracy from America? Starting with the Native Americans (40 million of them democratized into the grave, which is a very democratic place, where all men, women and children are completely equal,) and ending with the Serbs, Iraqis, Libyans, Yemenis, and Syrians? Maybe someone should suggest to Mr. Pence that a great peace of mind can be achieved by a charitable philanthropist, by blowing the beneficiary's brains out of his skull. Perhaps he himself is in need of some comfort and rest?
I had another bumper sticker, around the time when America was writing a Constitution for newly-liberated Iraq. It said: "Iraq needs a Constitution. Let them have ours - we're done with it."