Iran’s foreign minister has said that Europe is suffering “blowback” and meeting a similar fate to Iran’s nuclear deal, after US President Donald Trump threatened tariffs on European countries just six months after signing a trade deal.
In a special address to the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU would respond “unflinchingly, united and proportionally” to any tariffs imposed by Trump.
The US president threatened earlier this month to impose a 10 percent tariff on goods from eight European countries that opposed his proposal to takeover Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory.
Von der Leyen said the EU still considered the US a close ally, but warned against escalating trade disputes.
“The proposed additional tariffs are a mistake, especially between long-standing allies,” she said.
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“In politics, as in business, a deal is a deal. And when friends shake hands, it must mean something.”
She was referring to a trade deal signed between the EU and US in July.
In response, Seyed Abbas Aragchi, Iran’s foreign minister, accused Von der Leyen of selectively honouring deals.
“Sadly for Europe, its current conundrum is the very definition of ‘blowback’,” he wrote on X on Tuesday evening.
“The E3/EU faithfully obeyed and even abetted President Trump when he unilaterally abrogated the Iran Nuclear Deal during his first term.
“In doing so, they should have thought about today,” he added, referring to the informal E3 alliance between France, Germany and the UK.
‘Couldn’t happen to a more deserving continent’
In May 2018, during his first term, Trump unilaterally announced the US’s withdrawal from the nuclear agreement it had signed with Iran in July 2015, alongside China, France, Germany, Russia and the UK.
The withdrawal meant the reimposition of wide-ranging economic sanctions against Iran that had been lifted when the agreement was signed.
In originally signing the deal, Iran had accepted restrictions on its civil nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of all nuclear-related sanctions against it, including those imposed by the US and the EU.
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Since then, Iran and the US have been unable to come to a new agreement.
Last June, during a 12 day conflict between Israel and Iran, the US bombed three nuclear sites in Iran, in the first such American attack on Iranian soil.
Aragchi said on Tuesday that the lesson to draw for the EU was that either all deals were deals, or “no handshake means anything”.
He said the alternative was “nothing short of the breakdown of the international order”.
“Case in point: Mr Trump’s threat to take over Greenland by any means – unlawful as it is under any conception of international law or even a ‘rules-based order’ – could not happen to a more deserving continent,” Aragchi concluded.
Trump has doubled down on his threats to take over Greenland, stating on Tuesday that there was “no going back”.
His comments came after French President Emmanuel Macron warned of a shift towards “a world without rules”, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said the “old order is not coming back”.
Trump arrived at Davos on Wednesday, and said there were “a lot of meetings scheduled on Greenland”.
