GORDON SONDLAND: Iran is Europe’s moment of truth — will it stand with America?

the United States and Israel They do the heavy lifting. On February 28, joint US-Israeli strikes were launched –Operation Epic Rage And Operation Visiting Lion – which eliminated the Iranian Supreme Leader Ali KhameneiThe Iranian Minister of Defense, Commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

American military service members and Israeli pilots are at risk at this very moment, absorbing retaliatory strikes so that the free world does not have to live under a nuclear-armed theocracy. What did Europe offer? Ursula von der Leyen described the situation as “extremely worrying.” Emmanuel Macron He warned of “the outbreak of war.” France, Germany and the United Kingdom were quick to clarify that their forces were not participating.

The collective message from the continent was not solidarity but distance. If the transatlantic alliance cannot rely on Europe for even full popular support while the costs and risks are borne by the Americans and Israelis, then what exactly is the point of this alliance?

I write from experience. As the United States Ambassador to European UnionI have been tasked with urging our allies to abandon the JCPOA and join the United States’ maximum pressure campaign.

What I encountered in Brussels was deliberate denial. European officials made extraordinary distortions to avoid acknowledging what intelligence made clear: Iran had indeed violated the agreement. Federica Mogherini, then High Representative of the European Union, was simply uninterested in any evidence that contradicted her story. The creation of INSTEX – a financial instrument designed to circumvent US sanctions and keep European trade flowing with Iran – was a stunning display of misplaced priorities.

At a time when the democratic world should have been tightening vice, Europe was designing alternative solutions to deal with the mullahs. Iran took note and then systematically violated every enrichment limit imposed by the JCPOA, reaching 60% purity – a technical step short of weapons-grade material. Europe’s devotion to the JCPOA has not curbed Iran. You have empowered Iran.

Iran has not adapted to the American rules of the game. Russia and China have already done so

What makes the European sideways position not only disappointing, but absurd is that Iran has been attacking Europe for many years.

In 2018, an Iranian diplomat working from the Vienna embassy in Belgium was convicted of masterminding a plot to bomb a gathering of Iranian dissidents near Paris – a gathering of tens of thousands, including a sitting British MP who said that, had the plot succeeded, it would have been the deadliest terrorist operation ever carried out. European soil.

In London, a journalist working for Iran International was stabbed near his home by attackers linked to Tehran. The Director General of MI5 has revealed that British security services tracked more than 20 deadly Iranian-backed plots in one year.

Dutch intelligence linked Tehran to assassination attempts in the Netherlands. German and French authorities revealed Iranian agents hiring European criminals to monitor Jewish targets in Paris, Munich and Berlin.

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Iran did not limit itself to threatening Europe in the abstract. It has deployed agents, recruited criminal agents, and attempted mass casualty attacks on European soil. Europe is still evading.

the The regime in Tehran Choose this path. It has enriched uranium to levels close to weapons grade. It armed and directed Hamas in the barbaric attack that occurred on October 7. It has unleashed the Houthis on international shipping. When its people rose up in the largest protests since the 1979 revolution, the regime slaughtered thousands of unarmed civilians on direct orders from Khamenei, the largest street massacres in Iran’s modern history.

Even when the Omani Foreign Minister announced a supposed breakthrough in the nuclear talks two days before the strikes, Iran was tripling its oil exports so that its economy would become immune to sanctions. The diplomatic runway has been exhausted.

now Khamenei died. The top leadership of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard was liquidated. The interim leadership council that Ali Larijani hastily announced is a sign of desperation, not stability. The regime’s retaliatory strikes show that even a mortally wounded theocracy remains dangerous – which is precisely why the pressures must not let up.

Mark Levin: Hands off post-war Iran? This may be a grave strategic mistake for America and the world.

The United States and Israel must continue operations until… Iranian nuclear infrastructureBallistic missile capabilities and the ability to wage proxy warfare are in permanent decline, and until any authority in Tehran understands that reshaping these programs means annihilation.

No one is asking Europe to fire a single bullet. The United States and Israel have borne this burden. But the least our closest allies can do is provide unequivocal public support. Not talky calls for “maximum self-restraint.” Not frantic explanations for non-participation. Macron is not calling for an emergency session of the Security Council, as if the problem was the response to 40 years of Iranian aggression and not the aggression itself.

Europe should openly support the campaign to dismantle the regime’s military capabilities. Apply the full range of sanctions Without any cuts, they told the Iranian people that the democracies of the world stand with them, and not with the apparatus that slaughtered them.

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There is a broader dimension that European leaders would be wise to take into account. No one is monitoring the situation more carefully than Beijing. China has deepened its relations with TehranBuying oil at discounted prices in defiance of sanctions.

If Europe sits on the sidelines while America and Israel bear the burden alone, China will conclude that the Western alliance lacks the cohesion necessary to confront determined adversaries – a conclusion that will benefit us. Beijing accounts In Taiwan and abroad.

A united front sends the opposite message: the democratic world will not be divided, and the cost of supporting rogue regimes is real and rising.

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The window to surrender is open now, and it will not remain open forever. The United States and Israel have shown their determination to act, and they are paying the price in money, risk, and blood. Europe owes it to its allies, to the Iranian people, and to its stated values, to stand with them – publicly, unequivocally, and without the light of day.

Now it’s time to prove it.

Click here to read more from Gordon Sondland

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