#european-foreign-policy

#european-foreign-policy

Occasionally, history generates smooth changes from one era to another. More commonly, such shifts occur only gradually and untidily. And sometimes, as the former Downing Street foreign policy adviser John Bew puts it in the New Statesman, history unfolds in a series of flashes and bangs. In Caracas last weekend, Donald Trump's forces did this in spectacular style. In the process, the US brushed aside more of what remains of the so-called rules-based order with which it tried to shape the west after 1945.

Araghchi accused the three powers of ignoring the fact that it was the US, not Iran, that withdrew from the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). While Tehran took what he described as lawful remedial measures under the accord, the E3 failed to uphold their own obligations. Araghchi noted that European leaders once pledged to protect trade with Iran after US President Donald Trump reimposed sanctions in 2018.