tyle=”font-size: 11pt”>This week, history is repeating itself. Eight weeks ago, an Antwerp court sentenced Assadi and his three co-conspirators to between 15 and 20 years in prison. This was the first conviction of an Iranian official for terrorism offences since the 1979 Islamic revolution. Yet this week, the European powers pressed ahead with direct negotiations with Tehran in Vienna, aimed at expunging all trace of the Trump years and restoring the nuclear deal. By all accounts, progress was swift: a few days of discussions resulted in a ‘roadmap’ that could lead to a new agreement in as little as two months.
The Ayatollahs have never been in any doubt that the Europeans are in the palms of their hands. The only sanctions insisted on by Europe last week were symbolic restrictions on a small number of Iranian officials, a gesture of solidarity for dual nationals held hostage in Iranian prisons. Aside from this, there was simply no disguising the enthusiasm for welcoming the malignant theocracy back into the fold.
The difference now is that Biden is in the White House, and seems determined to once again offer the hand of friendship – so cruelly snatched away by that nasty Trump – to the theocracy in Tehran. Europe, naturally, welcomes such progressive statesmanship. Israel – no so much.
Israel, as the single country most threatened by Tehran (intelligence sources estimate that 80 per cent of threats against the Jewish state emanate from the theocracy) does not, shall we say, buy into the transatlantic policy of appeasement. Last week, Benjamin Netanyahu made his position clear ahead of a visit to Jerusalem by the new US secretary of defence, General Lloyd Austin, a visit designed to calm Israeli nerves over the impending nuclear deal. ‘These type of deals with extremist regimes are worth nothing,’ he said. ‘A deal with Iran that threatens us with annihilation will not obligate us.’
Speaking on Holocaust Remembrance Day, he added: ‘Only one thing will obligate us: to prevent those who wish to destroy us from carrying out their plans.’ On Sunday, an unexplained ‘incident’ occurred at Iran’s nuclear facility in Natanz — which had just started using more advanced centrifuges — taking out its electrical distribution grid.
In sharp contrast with Israel, whatever the opposite of retaliation is, Europe is following that policy. In the somnambulant haze that hangs in the continent’s corridors of power, even a fully armed bomb, built in Tehran and on its way to delivery to a rally of thousands of people in central Paris, is not enough to raise serious hesitations abut the intentions of the Iranian regime. The planned attack in the heart of France was generally viewed, amazingly enough, as an internal Iranian issue. The security services uprooted the spy network, then returned to business as usual. As one source familiar with the matter told me: ‘The plot may have been a wake-up call, but the Europeans tend to wake up from time to time, then fall asleep again.’ And this time, Europe and America are in lockstep. One can only hope that they are not sleepwalking to their own destruction.
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