As we highlighted in our previous blog post, Trump violates Iran Nuclear Deal, on May 8, 2018 President Donald Trump announced his decision to unilaterally reimpose sanctions on Iran, despite its full compliance with the agreement.

RI President Peggy Mason discusses the repercussions with host Don Martin on CTV’s Power Play:

Since then, experts have sought to better understand the reasons behind Trump’s deeply troubling action.  Ramesh Thakur, professor emeritus and former UN Assistant Secretary-General, writes:

Trump has pulled out of the deal not because it was flawed, but because it was working as intended and this posed an insurmountable obstacle to potential military strikes on Iran. As a consequence, Trump’s decision will worsen relations with Europe, destabilise the Middle East, complicate negotiations to reverse North Korea’s nuclearisation and damage the global nuclear order.

Click Trump is master of the art of making America grate (Australian Institute of International Affairs) for his full article.

Professor Paul Rogers of Bradford University has an equally pessimistic view of American and Israeli intentions.

On the positive side, European leaders are working extremely hard to salvage the Iran nuclear deal by counteracting American efforts to penalize European companies for continuing to do business with Iran.  In addition to a European Union-wide “blocking statute” to nullify any U.S. sanctions imposed on EU firms, consideration is also being given to measures to increase Europe’s financial independence from the United States:

One proposal is to set up a purely European finance house to oversee euro-denominated transactions with Iran. – French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire.

If the Europeans actually follow through and develop some much needed economic independence from the United States, that will be one positive result from the otherwise disastrous action by President Trump to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal.

For the full article on European efforts to salvage the deal, see: US faces European backlash against Iran sanctions (Guardian.com, 11 May 2018).

Photo credit: Wikimedia Images (North Tehran Towers)