Trump Will Announce Iran Deal Decision At 2 PM Tuesday

[Raginfridus]

Ultimately Trump is in charge.

If the neocons in Trump's cabinet were in charge, things would be a LOT worse, you have to admit. Trump has done a pretty fantastic job of restraining them.

But then why fill his cabinet with them?

[dannno]

But then why fill his cabinet with them?

I don't know, I guess I'll have to ask Rand next time I see him.

If I knew, I would have made a thread on it already.

But the reason isn't necessarily obvious.

Remember how Trump is like a magician, you don't watch the bird in his hand, you watch what he is doing with his other hand. It is ironic that twitter has a bird logo, because you could use that analogy with his tweets.

[Swordsmyth]

Germany says it will try to protect European companies from any adverse effects from US President Donald Trump's decision to quit the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement.

The announcement was made by German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz who said some time would be needed to study the actual impacts of Trump’s decision. "We'll try to do everything in our means so that European companies will be affected as little as possible," he said at a news conference as reported by Reuters.

More at: http://www.iran-daily.com/News/214805.html

[Swordsmyth]

Saudi Arabia is ready to increase its oil production in response to the expected decline in Iranian crude oil for international markets following President Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. That’s what an official from the Saudi energy ministry told local state news agency SPA as quoted by Reuters.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-G...-More-Oil.html

[Swordsmyth]

With Trump having started the 6 month process of pulling out from the Iranian nuclear deal (or rather as Steven Mnuchin admitted, Trump's true intention is merely renegotiating the existing deal and "entering a new agreement") the biggest concern among traders and analysts is what impact the Trump decision will have on Iran's oil exports.
As a reminder, some such as Barclays have suggested that Iran's oil production may not be affected at all; others such as UBS predict the sanctions could lead to the reduction of oil exports by 200-500kb/d over the next 6 months. Meanwhile, Deutsche Bank notes that because of the 180-day wind down period, neither Iranian oil production nor exports will drop before the 5 November 2018 effective date. In fact, if behavior follows the example from 2012, there is the possibility of a short spike in Iranian exports just before the effective date, after which a slow decline may set in.
As Goldman explains this morning, the final impact on Iran oil will likely be somewhere inbetween, with the ultimate impact on Iran production rather negligible for the foreseeable future. The reason for that is that following the announcement, other signatories of the deal reiterated their support for the agreement as well as their desire to revisit it. President Macron said that France, Germany and the UK regretted the decision and the EU vowed to uphold the Iran nuclear accord. Russia announced that the US alone would not be able to overturn the deal and its Deputy Foreign Minister said it was willing to support France's proposal for new negotiations. At the same time, Iran announced that it will remain in the nuclear deal and will start talks with European nations, China, and Russia.
So with the support of the other deal signatories in place, Goldman's Damien Courvalin writes that the impact on Iranian production may be more limited than implied by the US secondary sanctions, and certainly less than the 1mmb/d decline seen in 2012-15 which many use a benchmark for what happens next.
After all, as shown in the chart below, the bulk of Iranian exports is shipped to Asian countries - most of whom have already said they will continue importing Iranian oil - while the handful of European nations that received Iran crude will likely continue to do so in the future, once they request, and are granted, sanctions waivers.

Here is another breakdown, courtesy of Bloomberg:

For Iran's clients what happens this time will likely echo the last episode earlier this decade, when Iran was also sanctioned by the US. Back then countries were given exemptions by the U.S. - reviewed every 180 days - if they “significantly” reduced imports from the Islamic Republic. While a specific quantity of reductions that would make buyers eligible for waivers wasn’t announced, a slew of nations including China, India and South Korea received them.
Overnight, Japan became the first country to confirm that it will seek a waiver. The nation plans to find out whether its current import volume is enough to get an exception or whether it needs to further reduce purchases, Bloomberg reported.
Meanwhile, nations such as China, India and Turkey will most likely oppose outright the U.S. move and keep current levels of Iranian crude purchases; still some smaller US allies including South Korea may comply, unless they get a waiver, over concerns of they could lose a security umbrella against North Korea, according to MUFG Bank.
* * *
Separately, and in another deja vu to the last Iran sanctions, in order to skirt the U.S. financial system, Asian buyers could also resort to using currencies other than the dollar to pay Iran for their oil purchases. Payments may be routed through either local or foreign banks that don’t have close ties to America.
India initially paid Iran via a Turkish bank before routing payments through a domestic financial institution the last time sanctions were in place. The nation, along with China, also sought to get around the restrictions by trading oil with the Persian Gulf state for local currencies and goods including wheat, soybean meal and consumer products.
The EU could seek to protect its entities operating in Iran by offering currencies other than the U.S. dollar through institutions including the European Investment Bank, MUFG’s Khoman said. Indian oil buyers said they can continue to make payments in euros as long as the European Union doesn’t impose sanctions on the Persian Gulf state.
* * *

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ey-may-do-next

[fcreature]

New sanctions may have just cost my team our biggest deal of the year and many months of work down the drain.

But hey, at least my employees get an extra $100/month (or whatever) in their paycheck from those tax cuts. I'm sure he wouldn't have preferred his 5 figure commission.

Poor guy...

[AuH20]

[AuH20]

But then why fill his cabinet with them?

He likely made a deal to become POTUS. Remember who I'm talking about.

[Raginfridus]

I think its because he saw them on teevee

[r3volution 3.0]

There won't be a "better" deal. The US backed out. That's it. Iran remains committed and Europe, China, and Russia remain as well.

Although, with Europa Universalis bogged in rapefugee and nationalist conflicts, I don't know if they'll take much interest in maintaining the deal w/ us out.

Ho ho! That would leave the new Axis of Evil: Russia, China, Iran. Brace yourselves...

Wait, 2.5 of them have nuclear weapons....

Maybe it won't work so well this time.

We don't have an American president. We have an Israeli puppet pretending to be president.

He's not clever enough to be anyone's puppet. He's a weather-vane.

Or a...

[Ender]

America’s Word Is Worthless

By Paul Craig Roberts

PaulCraigRoberts.org

May 10, 2018


We can now dismiss all hope that Trump’s campaign promises to pull out of Syria, normalize relations with Russia and stop the offshoring of American jobs will ever become US policies. By dishonoring the US government’s word and pulling out of the Iran nuclear non-proliferation agreement, an agreement signed by the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, China, and Iran, President Trump has revealed that his regime is totally in the hands of the Zionist warmongers.

It was already evident, but America’s renewal alone in the world of the fabricated conflict with Iran is proof that US foreign policy is in the hands of Israel. All you have to do is to watch Nikki Haley, US Ambassador to the UN, groveling at the feet of AIPEC, to watch US Secretary of State Pompeo groveling at the feet of Netanyahu, to see the glee all over the face of neoconservative Israeli agent John Bolton, the National Security Adviser to the President of the United States, from his realization that his conflict agenda with Iran has prevailed. Indeed the entire Trump regime are such dedicated grovelers at Israel’s feet that the Trump regime comes across as a barbaric tribe groveling before the King of Kings.

Washington’s major European vassals said that they will stick to the agreement. We will see if they can withstand the pressures and the sums of money that will be thrown at them to change their minds.

This means a new test for Russia. Can the Russian government stand the destabilization of Iran any more than it can the destabilization of Syria? Can Russia again muster the determination to protect her southern flank?

One wonders if Trump’s ill-considered decision has finally taught Putin, Lavrov and the Atlanticist Integrationists who have for so long resisted reality that the agreements that they so desperately want to make with Washington are completely worthless before they even make them.

Will Russia finally wake up and stop inviting more dangerous situations by her extraordinary indecisiveness? If Putin doesn’t put his foot down, he is going to get us all killed.

[pcosmar]

And as soon as it was announced Israel went on alert and Attacked it's neighbor without provocation.

I more accurately with the intent to provoke War.

[Anti Globalist]

When Bibi tells Trump to jump, Trump says “How high?”

[Ender]

Israel, Iran, and the newest preemptive strikes in Syria
The Jewish State has produced a new pretext for aggression against Syria

Last week, Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu conducted a sort of ‘class’ on just how he thinks Iran has secretly been violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear agreement.

Yesterday, Trump refers to Netanyahu’s presentation as part of his reasoning for abandoning the international nuclear deal that European signatories had crossed the pond to beg Trump to preserve.

Almost immediately afterward, Israeli military in the Golan Heights goes on ‘high alert’ over what they call suspicious movement of Iranian forces in Syria.

Israel then conducted preemptive missile strikes near Damascus at what they called Iranian forces in order to head off an Iranian attack at Israeli forces in the Heights.

Israeli Defense Forces then report that they have intercepted twenty projectiles incoming near the Golan Heights, which they say was launched by the Iranians, but which the Syrians are saying is their own forces responding to Israel’s aggression, which was largely intercepted by the Syrian Air Defense.

Israel apparently knew that Trump was ending the nuclear deal, and thus anticipated that this would prompt Iranian forces to organize an assault against IDF forces, hence Israel established an alert, picked out some targets to paint as something to ‘retaliate’ against, took aim, and then fired, killing 15, including 8 Iranians, according to the Jerusalem Post, which was largely intercepted, but striking a radar site.

Not only did Israel know that Trump was about ‘provoke’ Tehran, they also knew that Iranian forces in Syria were coming for them, and that’s why Israel’s preemptive strikes were ‘retaliations’ against an Iranian offensive that hadn’t happened. Who wouldn’t want a crystal ball like the one that Netanyahu has?

http://theduran.com/israel-iran-and-...ikes-in-syria/

[Swordsmyth]

Iranian crude oil has landed an unlikely buyer in the South American country of Chile that occasionally buys Middle Eastern crude, shipping and trading sources told Platts on Thursday, two days after the U.S. withdrew from the Iran deal and said it was re-imposing sanctions on Iran, including on its energy sector and crude oil sales.
According to Platts’ sources, Chile’s state-held refiner ENAP has bought 140,000 metric tons of Iranian crude oil for May loading.
It’s a rare move for Chile, and this would be the first time in nearly 18 months that the country will have imported Iranian crude oil, according to data from S&P Global Platts trade flow software cFlow.
Iran is not the typical supplier of crude to Chile, and neither is the Middle East. Chile mostly imports oil from South American producers Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru, although it occasionally buys oil from Middle Eastern producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait.
While Chile is reportedly buying a rare Iranian oil cargo, the U.S. will be targeting Iran’s crude oil sales, and sanctions lifted under the deal will be re-imposed following a 180-day wind-down period, the U.S. Treasury said.
China, one of Iran’s key oil customers, assured Tehran that it would honor the nuclear deal from which the U.S. pulled out, and would continue to buy Iranian oil.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...-The-Deal.html

[enhanced_deficit]

Wow, did not see this coming:

Mika Brzezinski: Did Trump Quit Iran Deal To "Deflect" From Stormy Daniels?
RealClearPolitics May 9, 2018

[Swordsmyth]

Wow, did not see this coming:

Mika Brzezinski: Did Trump Quit Iran Deal To "Deflect" From Stormy Daniels?
RealClearPolitics May 9, 2018

That is just stupid, Trump said he would end the deal next time the last time he certified it.

[devil21]

Iranian crude oil has landed an unlikely buyer in the South American country of Chile that occasionally buys Middle Eastern crude, shipping and trading sources told Platts on Thursday, two days after the U.S. withdrew from the Iran deal and said it was re-imposing sanctions on Iran, including on its energy sector and crude oil sales.
According to Platts’ sources, Chile’s state-held refiner ENAP has bought 140,000 metric tons of Iranian crude oil for May loading.
It’s a rare move for Chile, and this would be the first time in nearly 18 months that the country will have imported Iranian crude oil, according to data from S&P Global Platts trade flow software cFlow.
Iran is not the typical supplier of crude to Chile, and neither is the Middle East. Chile mostly imports oil from South American producers Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador, and Peru, although it occasionally buys oil from Middle Eastern producers such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, and Kuwait.
While Chile is reportedly buying a rare Iranian oil cargo, the U.S. will be targeting Iran’s crude oil sales, and sanctions lifted under the deal will be re-imposed following a 180-day wind-down period, the U.S. Treasury said.
China, one of Iran’s key oil customers, assured Tehran that it would honor the nuclear deal from which the U.S. pulled out, and would continue to buy Iranian oil.

More at: https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-N...-The-Deal.html

In what currency unit is Chile buying the Iranian oil? That's the most important point.

[Swordsmyth]

The day after Trump announced his intention to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran, Khamenei sent a tweet that claimed Trump had written a letter to leaders of Persian Gulf Arab states “a few days ago” that demanded they do more in the region. “I spent $7 trillion and you must do something in return,” the Iranian leader claimed the letter stated.

A few days ago Trump wrote a letter to leaders of #PersianGulf states, which was revealed to us. He wrote: "I spent $7 trillion and you must do something in return." The U.S. wants to own humiliated slaves.
— Khamenei.ir (@khamenei_ir) May 9, 2018

The comments appeared to be directed at Persian Gulf countries such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — close allies of the Trump administration and, alongside Israel, the most vocal outside critics of the agreement that Iran reached with the United States and five other nations in 2015.
Khamenei also mentioned the letter during an event earlier Wednesday at Farhangian University in Tehran.
“A couple of days ago, Trump wrote a letter to the leaders of the Arab world. We have that letter,” the ayatollah said. “In the letter, he says I have spent $7 trillion on you, you have to do [what I say]. You spent this money to rule over Iraq and Syria. You couldn’t. To hell with it. He says you should do it and says Iran 'should' do it, too.”
The letter has not been publicly acknowledged by the White House, and a spokesman for the National Security Council said it could not comment on presidential correspondence. However, a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he did not have permission to discuss the matter publicly, said the Trump administration sent a letter to Persian Gulf Arab allies about two weeks ago.
The letter not only urged the U.S. allies to do more in the region's hot spots, such as Syria, but also sought a quick resolution to an ongoing dispute between a Saudi-led bloc and Qatar. The administration official said it was a formal follow-up to talks that Trump had with regional leaders over the past two months and aligned with his public comments on the issues.
Saudi Arabia, in turn, privately responded to the letter, the official said, and gently pushed back on the pressure about Qatar specifically. A spokeswoman for the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.
It is not clear how Iran's supreme leader found out about the letter, the official said. Theodore Karasik, a senior adviser with Washington-based Gulf State Analytics, said it was “significant because the content tells the supreme leader what Iran is about to face from the U.S.” and suggested that the letter could have been passed on by a regional power such as Kuwait, Qatar, Oman or Jordan or even an outside power like Russia.
Trump has said publicly that gulf allies should do more in the region and not rely on the United States as much as they do. He has also brought up the $7 trillion figure multiple times — saying in February, for example, that the United States has spent “$7 trillion in the Middle East,” which he called “a mistake.”

More at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.2fd421f60f18

[Swordsmyth]

In what currency unit is Chile buying the Iranian oil? That's the most important point.

I don't know.

[Ender]

The art of breaking a deal

Breaking the unwritten rules of global diplomacy, the Trump administration is now in violation of the multilateral Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or in plain language the Iran nuclear deal. Nuance is notoriously absent in what can only be described as a unilateral hard exit.

All suspended United States sanctions against Iran will be reinstated, and harsh additional ones will be imposed.

It does not matter that the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, repeatedly confirmed Iran was complying with the JCPOA as verified by 11 detailed reports since January 2016. Even US Secretary of Defense James Mattis vouched for the stringent verification mechanisms.

Facts appear to be irrelevant, though. The JCPOA is the Obama administration’s only tangible foreign policy success, so, for domestic political reasons, it had to be destroyed.

President Donald Trump’s opening address to the “Iranian people” during his White House speech also does not cut it. The overwhelming majority of Iranians support the JCPOA, and counted on it to alleviate their economic plight.

Moreover, Trump’s regime change advisers support the exiled People’s Mojahedin Organization, or MEK, which is despised beyond belief inside Iran.

As a minor subplot, rational geopolitical actors are asking what sort of national security advisor would strategically “advise” his boss to blow up a multilateral, United Nations-endorsed, working nuclear deal?

To cut to the chase, the US decision to leave the JCPOA will not open the path to an Iranian nuclear weapon. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, who has the last word, repeatedly stressed these are un-Islamic.

Regime change

It will not open the path toward regime change. On the contrary, Iran hardliners, clerical and otherwise, are already capitalizing on their interpretation from the beginning – Washington cannot be trusted.

And it will not open the path toward all-out war. It’s no secret every Pentagon war-gaming exercise against Iran turned out nightmarish. This included the fact that the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC, could be put out of the oil business within hours, with dire consequences for the global economy.

President Hassan Rouhani, in his cool, calm, collected response, emphasized Iran will remain committed to the JCPOA. Immediately before the announcement, he had already said: “It is possible that we will face some problems for two or three months, but we will pass through this.”

Responding to Trump, Rouhani stressed: “From now on, this is an agreement between Iran and five countries … from now on the P5+1 has lost its 1… we have to wait and see how the others react.

“If we come to the conclusion that with cooperation with the five countries we can keep what we wanted despite Israeli and American efforts, Barjam [the Iranian description of the JCPOA] can survive.”

Clearly, a titanic internal struggle is already underway, revolving around whether the Rouhani administration – which is actively working to diversify the economy – will be able to face the onslaught by the hard-liners. They have always characterized the JCPOA as a betrayal of Iran’s national interest.

Following Rouhani, “others” reacted quickly. The European Union’s big three of Germany, France and Britain made it clear that trade and investment ties with Iran would not be sacrificed. Those views were echoed by the EU’s leading diplomat Federica Mogherini in a statement.

Still, the key question now is how, in an interlinked global economy, European banks will be able to manage trade facilitation.

Diplomats in Brussels told Asia Times that the EU is already devising a complex mechanism to protect European companies doing business in Iran. This is something that has been discussed between Iranian and the EU3 diplomats.

Yet in the event the EU3 capitulates, even with support from Russia and China, the JCPOA will be effectively over with unpredictable consequences. These would include Iran’s possible exit from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

On the crucial oil front, Gulf traders told Asia Times that even with new US sanctions, and the possibility of crude being priced way beyond the current US$70-a-barrel, up to 1 million barrels a day of Iranian oil would simply disappear from global markets.

If the EU, which imports 5% of its oil from Iran, buckles under too much pressure, these exports will be relocated to Asian customers such as China, India, Japan and South Korea.

The US decision has also cast a shadow over the upcoming US-North Korea summit. The perception in Pyongyang – not to mention Beijing and Moscow – will be inevitable – the US can not be trusted.

For all its faults, the JCPOA remains a complex, painstakingly designed multilateral agreement, which took 12 years of diplomacy to broker, and was sanctioned by the UN.

Key hub
The geopolitical consequences are massive. To start with, strategically, Washington is isolated. The only actors applauding the decision to rip up the deal are Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

As Iran is a key hub of the ongoing Eurasia integration process, the trade-investment partnership with both Moscow and Beijing will be even stronger as Asia Times has reported.

On the military front, nothing will prevent Russia from supplying Iran with S-400 missile systems or China with its “carrier-killers.”

The JCPOA was a dizzyingly complex technical undertaking. In parallel, it is no secret the US establishment never got over the 1979 Islamic revolution. The privileged roadmap in the Beltway remains regime change.

The real US objective – way beyond the JCPOA’s technicalities – was always geopolitical. And that meant stopping to Iran from becoming the leading power in Southwest Asia.

That still applies as seen by the United States Central Command’s recent drive “to neutralize, counterbalance and shape the destabilizing impact Iran has across the region…” Or, in Trump terminology, to curtail Iran’s “malign activities.”

CENTCOM commander, Gen. Joseph Votel, went straight to the heart of the matter when he told the US House Armed Services Committee in February that “both Russia and China are cultivating multidimensional ties to Iran … Lifting UN sanctions under the joint comprehensive plan of action opens [the] path for Iran to resume application to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization.”

In a nutshell, this betrays the entire project which is to thwart the Eurasia integration process, which features Russia and China as peer competitors aligning with Iran along the New Silk Roads.

Predictably, we are back to the late Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard.

“…Potentially the most dangerous scenario would be an ‘anti-hegemonic’ coalition united not by ideology but by complementary grievances … a grand coalition of China, Russia, perhaps Iran … reminiscent in scale and scope of the challenge posed by the Sino-Soviet bloc, though this time, China would likely be the leader and Russia the follower,” he wrote. “Averting this contingency … will require US geostrategic skill on the western, eastern, and southern perimeters of Eurasia simultaneously.”

So, Trump has reshuffled the Grand Chessboard. Persians, though, happen to know a thing or two about chess.

http://www.atimes.com/article/the-ar...eaking-a-deal/

[r3volution 3.0]

We live in interesting times..

The day the US attacks Iran, that very moment, will be the exact moment that US hegemony ends.

Who wants to speak Chinese?

[H_H]

We live in interesting times..

The day the US attacks Iran, that very moment, will be the exact moment that US hegemony ends.

What insightful analysis and prediction. I'm sure it could never be wrong, just because every other prediction you've ever made has been. Your brain is so big, it blocks out the sun. Unlike Donald J. Trump's; his is so, so small. Why, he never could have accomplished half of what you've done.

Who wants to speak Chinese?

Everyone sick of conjugation in their foreign language studies. Chinese is a terrific language.

[Occam's Banana]

In what currency unit is Chile buying the Iranian oil? That's the most important point.

FTA (emphasis added): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iranian_oil_bourse

The IOB is intended as an oil bourse for petroleum, petrochemicals and gas in various currencies other than the United States dollar, primarily the euro and Iranian rial and a basket of other major (non-US) currencies.

[Swordsmyth]

The Kremlin says that Russia and its ex-Soviet allies will sign a free trade pact with Iran.
Putin's foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov said Friday the deal between Iran, Russia and other members of the Moscow-dominated Eurasian Economic Union is set to be signed next week. The grouping includes Kazakhstan, Belarus, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan.
While Ushakov noted that the pact's signing had been planned for long time, the move coincides with the U.S. exit from the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran that set the stage for re-imposing painful economic sanctions against Iran and rattled many U.S. allies.
Ushakov said Putin will discuss the U.S. withdrawal from the Iranian deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron, who are set to visit Russia later this month.

More at: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world...ran/ar-AAx6s5T

[enhanced_deficit]

Respected liberal neocon and NYT/PBS journalist, who had been covering Israel-Palestine/mideast wars without disclosing that his son was a soldier in Israeli military, referes to POTUS as a 'thung' and seems impressed by his 'thugish' skillset:

David Brooks: "Thug" Trump Understands Iran, North Korea Better Than People Who Have Higher SAT Scores

By Ian Schwartz
On Date May 12, 2018

PBS NEWSHOUR: New York Times columnist David Brooks and Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus join Amna Nawaz to analyze the week’s news, including President Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. out of the Iran nuclear deal, reactions from voters in Elkhart, Indiana, where President Trump held a campaign rally on Thursday, the contentious confirmation hearing of CIA director nominee Gina Haspel and more.

Brooks said coming from a world like the real estate business where you work with and cultivate a lot of thugs helped Trump, who he called "thuggish," deal with North Korea, China, and Iran. The columnist said the president understood being "tough" with a thug produced results in North Korea and even acknowledged that the U.S. is in a "better situation" with the rogue nation than we were otherwise.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/vi...at_scores.html

[Swordsmyth]

Two former Obama administration officials suggested that America’s European allies should punish President Donald Trump for withdrawing from the Iran deal and levying additional sanctions on the Islamic republic.

The European Union and individual European countries are obligated to take aggressive steps to preserve the Iran deal, in order to avoid becoming Trump’s “doormat,” Steven Simon and Jonathan Stevenson argued in an op-ed that ran in The New York Times Thursday. Both Simon and Stevenson were directors on former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council (NSC).
“The European Union could, for instance, announce the withdrawal of member-states’ ambassadors from the United States. Isn’t this what states do when diplomatic partners breach solemn agreements, expose them to security risks and threaten to wreak havoc on their economies? That is, after all, what the administration is threatening to do by courting the risk of a Middle Eastern war and applying secondary sanctions to European companies,” they argued.

“Depending on the American response, European capitals might even follow up with expulsion of American ambassadors.”

“It would be hard to fault these moves as irresponsible, given that they would not impair vital security functions like intelligence-sharing and law enforcement coordination. They would, however, symbolize a stark diplomatic breach that could extend to other areas in which the Trump administration needs allied support,” the former Obama officials wrote.
“Thus, the White House would face the first hard choice in this whole process: a full-blown crisis in trans-Atlantic relations. If the administration’s next move were to impose secondary sanctions on Europe, the Europeans could slap its own penalties on American multinational corporations, which in turn would place additional pressure on the White House.”
Simon and Stevenson conceded it would be “radical” for Europe to sanction American companies in order to protect the Iran deal, but claimed that “it would arise in response to correspondingly egregious American behavior.”

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ican-diplomats

[TheCount]

But then why fill his cabinet with them?

34DD chess.

[Swordsmyth]

Reuters reported that the European Commission is set to launch tomorrow the process of activating a law that bans European companies from complying with U.S. sanctions against Iran and does not recognise any court rulings that enforce American penalties. "As the European Commission we have the duty to protect European companies. We now need to act and this is why we are launching the process of to activate the ‘blocking statute’ from 1996. We will do that tomorrow morning at 1030,” European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said.
Speaking at news conference after a meeting of EU leaders in Bulgaria, Juncker added that he "also decided to allow the European Investment Bank to facilitate European companies’ investment in Iran. The Commission itself will maintain its cooperation will Iran."
Europe's hardline position will infuriate Trump, as Brussels effectively nullifying US sanctions will prompt a violent outburst from Trump, who needs Europe on his side for US sanctions of Iran to have any chance of succeeding.
Perhaps sensing what is coming, French President Emmanuel Macron took a slightly softer tone, and said that the French defense of Iran nuclear accord is based on concerns about security and stability, not commerce, and that the deal should be supplemented and it is necessary to continue negotiations, including on missile program.
The French president said that "the European Union decided to preserve the nuclear deal and defend EU companies" adding that "our main interest in Iran is not in trade, but in ensuring stability in the region, at the same time, we will not become an ally of Iran against the US."
"My priority is not commercial, it is geopolitical and strategic. It is about stability, it is about favoring an opening of Iranian society. The hardliners in Iran were the most opposed to this accord."
“We’ve had a vibrant discussion on Iran. The 2015 nuclear agreement is a crucial element of peace and security in the region. We have opted to support it whatever the US decides to do,” said the French president on arrival at the Sofia summit. “We have pledged to take necessary political steps for our companies to stay in Iran.”
Macron also said that the nuclear deal with Iran must not only be preserved, but also supplemented and expanded to include ways to solve the missile problem and questions about Iran's role in the region.
"International companies with interests in many countries make their own choices according to their own interests. They should continue to have this freedom," he added, making it clear that European companies will not be subject to US sanctions, even if that decision is ultimately up to the US.
Still he said he won’t force companies to stay in Iran should the U.S. re-impose sanctions; "The President of the Republic is not the director general of Total."
As such, France and the EU have no intention of imposing sanctions or counter-sanctions on U.S. companies over the U.S.’s re-imposition of sanctions on Iran, Macron said.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...pean-companies