After announcing withdrawal from the Iran nuclear agreement, the US government declared economic sanctions to be imposed on Iran, threatening European firms if they continued their commercial relationships with Iran.

The US president, Donald Trump, promised Iran with the highest levels of economic sanctions, including cancellation of Boeing and Airbus deal with Iran, a deal worth billions of dollars.

As the current situation is a general threat to the commercial movements in Europe, and the entire world, European leaders, along with EU, has moved retain the Iran accord, and to protect European firms doing business with Iran from any sanctions.

General European movement against US sanctions

France announced it will retain the agreement with all respects. On the other hand, EU ministers are trying to soothe Iranian concerns about the effect of US decisions on their commercial relationship.

The ministers believe Iran will only retain the agreement when they make sure the economic benefits will survive the American sanctions, and that Trump’s move didn’t deal a fatal blow to the agreement.

Tehran was concerned in recent weeks as the EU had waited too long to appease Trump, and after all, its diplomatic clash with the US had appeared to be a failure. Now, it appears that Europe is going to be united to protect the agreement even if that means putting its member countries on an economic collision with the United States.

The European Union is at an early stage at working on coordinating the final package, but still, the European Union is warning the United States that it will impose countersanctions if Trump’s administration attempts harm European firms trading with Tehran.

Both the United Kingdom and France believe that a better package designed to follow on nuclear disarmament deal with Tehran must be agreed, even though the US rejected it.

Europe facing Trump over Iran nuclear deal exit and economic sanctions

European leaders believe Trump administration has no intention to contain Iran, aside from putting economic pressure on Tehran.

Shockingly, Trump appeared to be unsure about his next move when asked in a cabinet meeting, but still consisting that Iran will suffer consequences if nuclear activities continued.

Senior diplomats from the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and also the United States, didn’t expect Trump to make such announcement before the end of the week. Also, aside from finding ways to save the accord, they were forced to focus on the US imposing sanctions on European firms dealing with Tehran.

The severity of such sanctions unsettled Europeans, as no one expected Trump to go so far in breaking the deal with Iran. Trump’s administration also believed that by withdrawing from the agreement, they could organize a more comprehensive agreement, that focuses on more than the nuclear aspect.

However, experts believe it now would be near impossible to put Iran under the same pressure that made the Iran nuclear accord possible before.

Still, Trump believes he can plan for a better agreement.

Germany, Italy, and France are the most linked EU countries to Iran, but also the United Kingdom has been trying to build links to the country, which has 80 million, mostly young, consumers.
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