The web of American sanctions on Iran is being tightened. The White House recently cancelled the waivers that still permitted a few countries to import Iranian oil and announced new sanctions on Iran’s metallurgist industry. The exchange rate of the Iranian rial is in freefall while both inflation and unemployment grow rapidly. Meanwhile, aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln arrived in the Persian Gulf and tensions are rising by the day. The European Union, France, Germany, United Kingdom – and the Netherlands – are largely watching the spectacle of unapologetic American realpolitik. However, these countries also remain party to the roughly four-year-old nuclear deal with Iran in which they committed to supporting Tehran economically in exchange for temporary limitations on its nuclear development.
Now that war threatens, a strategic reorientation has become urgent. The issue is less about Iran and more about the importance of stability in the Middle East after years of revolutions and conflict. Europe, after all, is not separated from the Middle East by the Atlantic Ocean. If the Syrian civil war offered a preview of the refugees, terrorists and criminals that conflict can generate, the specter of war with Iran should induce great caution.
And why would such a conflict be warranted in the first place? Because the US seeks regime change in a country with which it developed a traumatic obsession since the Iranian revolution of 1979? Because Saudi-Arabia – the country that orchestrated the murder of Jamal Kashoggi – fears Iran as rival, or because Israel remains in conflict with Hezbollah due to its continued repression of the Palestinians? Iran is a regional power with a solid place in the political order of the Middle East. History suggests that attempts to exclude such regional powers produce instability, or worse.
