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But the mood in Berlin is rather pessimistic about any of this having much impact. As in France, most do not see a practical way for Europe to protect its corporations and banks from US secondary sanctions. Even if EU found a way to retaliate, the US would continue to apply its sanctions policy to all commercial actors doing business in the US. German industry, notably machine building, aviation, and financial services, is already calling for government support or compensation. But is is clear to both business leaders and policymakers that public money will not compensate for the €170 billion of German trade with the US in order to retain €3 billion worth of trade with Iran.
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http://www.ecfr.eu/publications/summary/vfc_the_view_from_the_capitals_trumps_withdrawal_from_the_iran_deal

Zuper wrote:To nije tako jednosmerna ulica. Ako bi se stvarno odlucilo na nivou EU da odgovore kontra-sankcijama SAD itekako bi se u SAD pitali da li nastaviti. Medjutim u SAD znaju da to nije moguce jer gomilu drzava u EU oni kontrolisu...
EU bi da glumi nesto a da nista ne reskira i ostane sve kako je sada. To tako ne ide.
Zato sada neka gube novce...Ovo sa Iranom je veliki poraz Nemacke i Francuske jer su oni vukli celu pricu. Sada neka cekaju da li ce Tramp uspeti nesto na svoju ruku pa da im udeli milostinju.

Mattis: U.S. Left Nuclear Deal Due to Iranian Military Aggression, Missile Testing
By: John Grady
May 9, 2018 2:59 PM



Defense Secretary James Mattis stressed it was Tehran’s aggressive military behavior – from ballistic missile testing to its intervention in the Syrian civil war to financially and militarily supporting terrorists to threatening maritime commerce across the Middle East – that factored into President Donald Trump’s decision this week to walk away from the nuclear agreement with Iran.

Testifying Wednesday before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee, he said of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action on Iran’s nuclear program, “we found it inadequate for the long-term effort” to bring Iran back into compliance with international norms of behavior.

“We will continue to work alongside our allies and partners to ensure that Iran can never acquire a nuclear weapon, and will work with others to address the range of Iran’s malign influence,” Mattis said.

In recent weeks, French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel met with Trump to urge him to remain in the deal but work with them in improving it. Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May took the same position in writing Trump.

In addition to those nations, Russia and China also participated in the negotiations and signed. There was no vote in the Senate to ratify the agreement as a treaty when the deal was reached in July 2015.

At the hearing, Mattis added that the administration has been in office since January 2017, so “this was not a hasty decision.” By re-imposing the sanctions that were in place when the agreement was signed, “we now have the opportunity to move forward” in strengthening any future agreement with Tehran over its nuclear program.

He said the decision also demonstrates to North Korea the United States’ seriousness about nuclear negotiations.

National Security Advisor John Bolton, speaking at a White House press briefing Tuesday, said, “this deal [with Tehran] was fundamentally flawed” because “it does not do what it purports to do:” stopping Iran from “developing deliverable nuclear weapons.” Bolton called the inspection provisions in the 2015 agreement severely lacking in allowing the United States and other signatories “to have confidence that we’ve detected all of Iran’s nuclear-related activities.”

He added, “the only sure way to get on the path to stopping Iran from developing nuclear weapons and delivery capabilities was to get out of the deal.”

In announcing the United States’ plans, Trump, quoting former Secretary of State Dean Acheson, said the nation must always negotiate from a position of strength.

“This was a horrible, one-sided deal that should have never, never been made,” Trump said.
“It didn’t bring calm, it didn’t bring peace, and it never will.”

Talking to the press after Trump’s short address, Bolton said the message to North Korea “is the president wants a real deal; that’s what we’re asking for, what Secretary [Mike] Pompeo will be discussing with people in North Korea.”

Those talks ended Wednesday.

Mattis said at the Senate hearing, “there is some reason for optimism” in looking at the upcoming summit between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Panmunjom. “These talks can be fruitful.”

When asked if the Pentagon was developing new operational plans for the Middle East in wake of the decision to leave the Iran deal, Mattis said, “we maintain military options because of Iran’s threats,” including its “death to America” rallies and propaganda. He cited his experience as U.S. Central Command’s top officer, adding, “we are always updating those plans … as rapidly as needed.”

He said in answering a later question that he did not expect to request additional funds for CENTCOM at this time as a result of leaving the deal.

Although Bolton branded Tehran as “the central banker of international terrorism,” he dismissed the ideas that the United States was moving to a war footing or seeking regime change in Tehran by pulling out of the agreement.

Zeroing in on the nuclear issue’s importance in any negotiation, he said, “when you’re serious about eliminating the threat of nuclear proliferation, you have to address the aspects that permit an aspiring nuclear weapons state to get there. The Iran deal did not do that. A deal that we hope to reach, the president is optimistic we can reach, with North Korea will address those issues.”

Bolton said later, “verification and compliance aspects of any proliferation or arms control deal are absolutely essential” in any agreement.

https://news.usni.org/2018/05/09/mattis-u-s-left-nuclear-deal-due-ongoing-iranian-missile-tests-military-aggression

Russia is not in talks with the Syrian government about supplying advanced S-300 ground-to-air missiles and does not think they are needed, the Izvestia daily cited a top Kremlin aide as saying on Friday, in an apparent U-turn by Moscow.

The comments, by Vladimir Kozhin, an aide to President Vladimir Putin who oversees Russian military assistance to other countries, follow a visit to Moscow by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week, who has been lobbying Putin hard not to transfer the missiles.

Russia last month hinted it would supply the weapons to Assad, over Israeli objections, after Western military strikes on Syria. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the strikes had removed any moral obligation Russia had to withhold the missiles and Russia's Kommersant daily cited unnamed military sources as saying deliveries might begin imminently.

Joost Hiltermann  @JoostHiltermann


Some quick thoughts: It looks like #Israel initiated military activity against Syrian regime and Iranian assets in Syria last night in order to take advantage of favorable political situation in aftermath of #Trump's withdrawal from #IranDeal, and also...  /2
/2 to draw a red line against #Iran/#Hezbollah moves southward toward #GolanHeights now that regime has completed takeover of most Damascus suburbs, freeing up forces. Yet the Iranians don't seem to be responding, Israeli claims to the contrary - .../3
3/  or at least not with the ferocity that would enable an even stronger Israeli riposte. Moreover, Israel is constrained by #Russia's two principal red lines: Syrian regime preservation, and no harm to Russian assets and personnel..../4
4/  Hence #Netanyahu's visit to Moscow now, while military operations were being prepared: to gauge Putin's acquiescence to Israeli strikes, and understand the limits. Likewise, the #Saudis and #Emiratis seem to be gearing up for an assault on #Hodeida, similarly realizing.../5
/5 that their moment may be now or never. No one knows how this perfect (to them) alignment of Trump, #Bolton and #Pompeo will last. But they, too, face real limits. Militarily, Hodeida port and city may be one proverbial bridge too far without major US military support....6/
/6 And if and when they take Hodeida, they may discover that now they will own #Yemen's humanitarian catastrophe even more than they already have. In sum: the Washington-Tel Aviv-Riyadh-Abu Dhabi alliance.../7
/7 may well have an opportunity to pursue its priority agenda of pushing back against Iran in the #MiddleEast and #Gulf, but they face real constraints, and much will depend on how Iran responds.../8
/8 If the Iranians are wise, as some Israeli security officials intimated, they would not respond militarily but sit back and negotiate with the Europeans to keep the #IranDeal alive until the Trump misadministration is history..../9
/9 But some of the hardliners in Tehran may have different ideas, and instead go for the bait. In that case, my advice to all of you: Hold on to your seats. /END
Back in February, we warned about an externally-driven escalation scenario in Syria. Iran and Israel are playing a game of chicken in seeking to set their red lines. But are their positions reconcilable? Very likely not. Meanwhile, ordinary Syrians suffer.

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/994605694014885888.html

Arsen Ostrovsky‏Потврђен налог @Ostrov_A  10. мај
Одговор за корисника @JoostHiltermann
Some quick thoughts? Maybe you should’ve taken some more time and looked deeper into what happened. Had you done so, you would’ve seen it was #Iran who was the one that initiated the barrage of rocket fire at #Israel.

Joost Hiltermann‏ @JoostHiltermann  10. мај
This was sequence: 1) Israeli mortar/artillery fire on regime-controlled Baath City around midnight; 2) within minutes, Syrian army responds w/ artillery fire at Israeli sources; 3) Dozens of rocket strikes from Syria on broader range of Israeli targets, roughly an hour later.

Arsen Ostrovsky‏Потврђен налог @Ostrov_A  10. мај
Actually I believe you are quite wrong here. The first fire was by the Iran Quds forces in Syria, to which Israel responded. You may care to check with @LTCJonathan.

Joost Hiltermann‏ @JoostHiltermann  10. мај
I'm quite aware of the official Israeli version.

Arsen Ostrovsky‏Потврђен налог @Ostrov_A  10. мај
And yet you choose to go with the version from Iran / Syria?

Joost Hiltermann‏ @JoostHiltermann  10. мај
I don't think that's their version. In any case, we go by our field research -- our own people on the ground.

US faces European backlash against Iran sanctions

Senior politicians says Europe will consider countermeasures to keep trading with Iran

Patrick Wintour Diplomatic editor

Fri 11 May 2018 12.48 BST

Europe is prepared to introduce measures to nullify the effect of Donald Trump imposing sanctions on any non-US firm that continues to do business with Iran, the French government has said.

The warning from the French finance minister, Bruno Le Maire, suggests Trump’s proposals to corral Europe into joining US foreign policy on Iran may lead to a severe backlash by EU firms and politicians, especially advocates of a stronger independent European foreign policy.

“We have to work among ourselves in Europe to defend our European economic sovereignty,” Le Maire said, adding that Europe could use the same instruments as the US to defend its interests. Speaking on Europe 1 he added: “Do we want to be a vassal that obeys and jumps to attention?”

When Trump announced he was pulling the US out of the Iran nuclear deal he said the US was also reimposing sanctions, including on any entity that continued to trade with Iran, in effect threatening billions of euros of European business.

The US Treasury has said it is giving companies three to six months to wind down their contracts, including purchases of Iranian oil.

On Friday Le Maire put forward three main proposals starting with an EU-wide blocking statute similar to an EU regulation passed in 1996 designed to nullify any US sanctions imposed on EU firms. The statute permitted European companies to ignore the US sanctions and said that any decisions by foreign courts based on the such sanctions would not be upheld in Europe. The US backed down before any sanctions were implemented.

“We want to reinforce this regulation and incorporate the recent decisions taken by the United States,” Le Maire said.

He added: “The second avenue is looking at Europe’s financial independence – what can we do to give Europe more financial tools allowing it to be independent from the United States?” One proposal is to set up a purely European finance house to oversee euro-denominated transactions with Iran.


He also proposed a European agency capable of following the activities of foreign companies. Le Maire said he would meet with German and British finance ministers at the end of the month to discuss these proposals.

Le Maire disclosed that he had already called the US Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, urging him to allow exemptions for French companies or a delay in implementing the sanctions, while admitting he had “few illusions” about the likely response.

The UK foreign secretary Boris Johnson will meet his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian in London on Monday to discuss the Iran crisis. Le Drian has already described the US extraterritorial sanctions as unacceptable, saying European business should not be required to pay for US foreign policy decisions.

A week of intensive diplomacy will continue on Tuesday when the Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif meets his European counterparts in Brussels. The Iranian government issued a lengthy statement on Friday saying Europe needed “to move from giving pledges to taking practical steps without any preconditions”.

German chancellor Angela Merkel said possibilities to save the deal without Washington needed to be discussed with Tehran, while economy minister, Peter Altmaier, said Germany was ready to give help to its affected firms, including legal advice, to continue doing business in Iran.

The new US ambassador to Germany was forced on to the defensive this week after sending out a tweet telling German businesses they should wind down their links with Iran.

Richard Grenell said he had been issuing advice, not instructions, and his remarks derived from a Washington memo.

Omid Nouripour, the Green foreign policy spokesperson in the German parliament, advised Grenell against “driving a ruthless aggressive policy towards our security interests”. The Social Democrats said Grenell needed tutoring in diplomacy.

In Italy, Nathalie Tocci, an adviser to the EU external affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said Trump’s decision to pull out of the Iran deal was “an utter and unjustified betrayal of Europe”. She called for proportionate reprisals if necessary.

The EU and US combined to impose sanctions against Iran between 2012 and 2015. After the Iran deal was struck in 2015, the Obama administration worked with European banks to reassure them that some US sanctions that remained in force did not restrict the rights of European business.

The former US ambassador to Italy, David Thorne, said Trump’s decision had the potential to cause the biggest rift between the US and mainland Europe since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Ellie Geranmayeh, an Iran expert with the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Europe needed to produce a counter-package against the US, including penalties against assets of US companies based in Europe to allow for clawback of illegal fines imposed.

The UK is not as heavily involved in Iranian trade as France, Germany and Italy, partly because UK finance houses are so strongly intertwined with the US, and therefore vulnerable to fines if they are deemed to have breached sanctions.

The sanctions policy gives the US Treasury considerable latitude to interpret whether a firm is doing its best to unravel its business links, but previous fines for alleged breaches led many firms to err on the side of caution.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/11/europe-prepares-countermeasures-against-us-iran-sanctions

Judge Jeanine: Trump fulfilled biblical prophecy by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/p5vVKvM0xp

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 13, 2018

Left: #Jerusalem
Right: #Gaza

(Pictures taken at the same time this afternoon) pic.twitter.com/0ySzaGjQC9

— Patrick Galey (@patrickgaley) 14. мај 2018.

#Israel, deprived #Fadi_Abu_Saleh of his legs in its 2008 war against #Gaza.
Today its killed him with live ammunition for protesting with a slingshot.
Fadi, a double amputee, was one of 52 #Palestinians killed today for demanding a life of freedom & dignity. #MarchofReturn pic.twitter.com/Pyo9LxK3Pe

— Hala Jaber (@HalaJaber) May 14, 2018