It’s embarrassing that European and British pleas for deescalation were ignored and worse that America’s supposed allies were kept out of the military loop. But the most egregious suggestion is that Trump was actively using the diplomatic efforts of his supposed “friends” across the Atlantic to mislead Iran into thinking any attack was potentially weeks away.
According to a lengthy report by the New York Times, Trump’s statement that he would take as long as two weeks to decide on whether to strike Iran — because of a “substantial” chance for diplomacy — was always merely a calculated misdirection. At around 5 p.m. on Friday June 20, just a few hours after the E3 talks in Geneva concluded, Trump ordered the bombers into the air, the newspaper reported.
“In the lead-up to the strikes, the E3 were largely sidelined in nuclear talks, as negotiations became increasingly dominated by direct U.S.-Iran interactions, with Europe unable to offer meaningful incentives or guarantees,” said Vakil from Chatham House. The Geneva meeting “further exposed this impotence, with European calls for restraint overshadowed by decisive U.S. military action taken without their consultation.”
A German government official tried to downplay the significance of being excluded. “Every conflict has a military side and a diplomatic side,” the official said. “We know that the Americans themselves are continuing to take precautions to get into such a diplomatic off-ramp. That is why I believe that the agreements, the understandings that were reached between the USA, the E3 and others to work on such an off-ramp were not worthless at the time and they will remain not worthless.”
When asked about the two-week deadline set by Trump, the official said: “There’s something a bit biblical about that. Two weeks can mean many things. We have learned in other contexts that it can describe a very long period of time. We have now also discovered that it can describe a very short period of time.”
On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron tried to argue that Europe was winning. “I am well aware that when weapons strike, when we do not participate in these strikes, we can feel marginalized,” he said. “That is what I sometimes hear in comments from some people. I think that when we decided not to strike but we remain consistent in our position, strategically and in the long term, we win.”
