WarSclerotic

Europe should take action to neutralize the consequences of the U.S. decision to quit a 2015 Iran nuclear accord to ensure its own long-term economic interests, Iran’s Foreign Minister said in an interview published on Saturday.

Mohammad Javad Zarif told Germany’s Der Spiegel news magazine that Iran could “reduce its implementation” of the agreement and possibly increase uranium enrichment activities if the nuclear agreement was jeopardized by “the actions of the Americans and the passivity of the Europeans.”

“The Europeans and other signatories must act to offset the consequences of the U.S. sanctions,” Zarif told the magazine, calling a package of measures drafted by Europe an important step that should now be implemented.

“What is paramount: Europe should do so not for Iran, but for its own sovereign and long-term economic interests.”

European Union officials strongly oppose the May decision by the United States to withdraw from the nuclear agreement, and have sought to salvage the deal in some form.

Germany on Friday said it was considering setting up a payment system with its European partners that would allow continued business transactions with Iran once U.S. sanctions kick in.

However, German officials concede privately that such a system would not prevent big companies that rely on U.S. exports to escape U.S. sanctions if they continue to sell to Iran.

Zarif said Tehran’s biggest priority was to continue to sell a reasonable amount oil worldwide and return the proceeds to Iran, as well encouraging investment and cooperation in areas such as technology and research.

“Europe said the nuclear agreement was in its security interest. Then Europe must be ready to pay for its security,” Zarif said. “Nothing is for free.”

He said Europe should be “ready to pay for its security” by implementing a European Union “blocking agreement” under which it can punish European firms for withdrawing from Iranian business deals to avoid U.S. sanctions.

“The question is whether European wants its companies to follow European laws or American ones, or whether it will submit to the American dictates,” Zarif said.

He said Iran had options to act if Europe failed to act to compensate Iran for the U.S. sanctions.

“We do not necessarily have to cancel [the agreement]. Article 36 of the agreement and Security Resolution 2231 make it possible to reduce implementation, without cancelling it,” he said.

Asked if Iran could resume increased enrichment of uranium, he said, “That would be one of the possibilities.”

Zarif said Tehran would not “waste its time” on additional negotiations with the United States about Iran’s behavior in the region unless Washington rescinded its decision to withdraw from the nuclear agreement.

“Only when Europe ensures that [the agreement] is implemented can Iran see if the attempt should be made to talk about other issues,” he said.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo lashed out at his Obama-era predecessor John Kerry for “actively undermining” U.S. policy on Iran by conducting several meetings recently with the Iranian foreign minister, who was his main interlocutor in the Iran nuclear deal negotiations.

In unusually blunt and caustic language, Pompeo said Friday that Kerry’s meetings with Mohammad Javad Zarif were “unseemly and unprecedented” and “beyond inappropriate.”

Late Thursday, U.S. President Donald Trump accused Kerry of holding “illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people.”

Pompeo said he would leave “legal determinations to others” but slammed Kerry as a former secretary of state for engaging with “the world’s largest state-sponsor of terror” and telling Iran to “wait out this administration.” He noted that just this week Iranian-backed militias had fired rockets at U.S. diplomatic compounds in Iraq.

“You can’t find precedent for this in U.S. history, and Secretary Kerry ought not to engage in that kind of behavior,” an agitated Pompeo told reporters at the State Department. “It’s inconsistent with what foreign policy of the United States is as directed by this president, and it is beyond inappropriate for him to be engaged.”

Kerry, who is promoting his new book “Every Day is Extra,” tweeted a response to Trump that referred to the president’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who agreed on Friday to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation into Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

“Mr. President, you should be more worried about Paul Manafort meeting with Robert Mueller than me meeting with Iran’s FM. But if you want to learn something about the nuclear agreement that made the world safer, buy my new book,” said Kerry.

He has been harshly critical of the president and his decision in May to withdraw from the Iran deal but denies “coaching” Tehran.

In a statement, his spokesman, Matt Summers, said: “There’s nothing unusual, let alone unseemly or inappropriate, about former diplomats meeting with foreign counterparts. Secretary [Henry] Kissinger has done it for decades with Russia and China. What is unseemly and unprecedented is for the podium of the State Department to be hijacked for political theatrics.”

During interviews this week, Kerry accused the Trump administration of pursuing a policy of regime change in Iran.

Pompeo pushed back, saying that was not the administration’s intention.

Pompeo also took to task former Energy Secretary Earnest Moniz and ex-Iran deal negotiator Wendy Sherman for joining Kerry at a meeting with Zarif and other Iranian officials earlier this year at a security conference in Munich – though Sherman said Friday she wasn’t with Kerry and Moniz when she met Zarif there. Along with Kerry, Moniz and Sherman played key roles in negotiating the 2015 agreement between Iran and several world powers that lifted sanctions against Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.,

“I wasn’t in the meeting, but I am reasonably confident that he was not there in support of U.S. policy with respect to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Pompeo said.

“Former secretaries of state – all of them, from either political party – ought not to be engaged in” this kind of activity, he said. “Actively undermining U.S. policy as a former secretary of state is literally unheard of.”

Meetings between private U.S. citizens and foreign officials are not against the law and not necessarily a violation of federal regulations, but Trump, Pompeo and several GOP lawmakers say they are evidence Kerry and former Obama administration officials are trying to subvert Trump’s hard line on Iran.

“John Kerry had illegal meetings with the very hostile Iranian Regime, which can only serve to undercut our great work to the detriment of the American people,” Trump tweeted late Thursday. “He told them to wait out the Trump Administration! Was he registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act? BAD.”

The law Trump invoked – the Foreign Agents Registration Act, or FARA – requires registration and transparency by people or companies acting on behalf of foreign governments, political parties or individuals.

But Josh Rosenstein, a partner with the Washington law firm Sandler Reiff and a specialist in lobbying compliance, said there are too many unanswered questions to know whether the law applies to Kerry’s interactions with Zarif. FARA’s provisions don’t extend to activities conducted entirely overseas, so where Kerry interacted with him matters. Also unclear is whether any Iranians specifically asked Kerry for advice.

“The devil’s always in the details,” Rosenstein said. “Simply offering advice to a foreign government doesn’t make you a foreign agent.”

When reports of Kerry’s ex-officio contacts with Zarif first surfaced in May, Trump tweeted similar thoughts. “John Kerry can’t get over the fact that he had his chance and blew it! Stay away from negotiations, John, you are hurting your country!” he said on May 8. A day earlier, he tweeted: “The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!”

Trump and Pompeo’s criticism came after Kerry told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Wednesday that earlier reports of his meetings with Zarif were correct: They had met three or four times since Kerry left office but not since Pompeo took the job in April. One of those meetings took place in Oslo, Norway, and another in Munich, he said. A third is reported to have occurred at the United Nations headquarters, which is not technically on U.S. soil.

Kerry told Hewitt that he was not coaching the Iranians on how to deal with the Trump administration.

“That’s not my job, and my coaching him [Zarif] … that’s not how it works,” he said in the interview. “What I have done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East for the better.”

A series of recent U.S. steps against the Palestinian Authority have infuriated the Palestinian leadership, but the outrage directed at the U.S. administration has been amplified by growing criticism directed at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, who has made “every possible mistake” since President Donald Trump entered the White House, according to a senior Palestinian official who spoke to Israel Hayom.

The official said that Abbas – fearing additional American sanctions on the PA – has instructed the Palestinians to “stop attacking [U.S. President Donald] Trump and the administration in Washington and to moderate statements against the U.S.”

Following the American decision last week to close the PLO mission in Washington, as well as the latest decision to stop funding projects that bring Israelis and the Palestinians together, Abbas has decided to shelve his plan to criticize the actions of the Trump administration at the U.N. General Assembly in New York at the end of the month.

“The closure of the PLO offices in Washington was shocking,” the official told Israel Hayom. “We didn’t think Trump would go so far as to shut down the official Palestinian [diplomatic] mission in the U.S.”

He added that many officials in the Palestinian leadership were deeply critical of the way Abbas is handling the ongoing crisis between the Palestinians and the White House.

“[Abbas] needs to rethink his path. He has made every mistake possible since Trump entered the White House,” the official said. “What infuriated President Trump was Abbas’ instruction to his representatives in Washington not to meet with [Special Envoy to the Middle East Jason] Greenblatt. What more needs to happen for the office of the rais [president] to realize that Trump doesn’t just make promises or threats – he carries them out?”

The Palestinian official listed the steps Trump has taken against the Palestinians and expressed Ramallah’s disappointment at the response, or lack thereof, from Arab states.

“He [Trump] moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem; canceled aid to UNRWA; and cut aid money wherever he could. The Arab world said that the attack on Jerusalem and the status of [Palestinian] refugees would lead to a world war, but it is only the Palestinians who are paying the price. Arab states like Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Jordan are giving Abbas the cold shoulder because they are not interested in a confrontation with the Trump administration – certainly not over the Palestinian issue,” he said.

“Our basic premise is that if [Palestinian] relations with the U.S. worsen, it will lead to more blows, which we might not be able to recover from. With all due respect to the support of the European Union, both diplomatically and financially, it’s no substitute for American support. Even the Arab states’ contribution is largely declarative, and most of the donations that Arab countries promise to send the Palestinians never arrive,” the official told the paper.

Abbas’ directive to his staff to moderate the tone when discussing Trump and the U.S. was plainly evident in an interview that senior PA official Saeb Erekat gave to Reuters last week.

“I don’t think they will ever introduce a plan,” Erekat said in an interview with Reuters in Jericho. “The whole world is rejecting their ideas,” he said.

Erekat added that the recent U.S. decisions about Palestinian matters indicated that its support of Israel was complete and biased.

“The Kushner truth and the Netanyahu truth is that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital, no right of return to refugees, settlements are legal, no Palestinian state on 1967 [borders] and Gaza must be separated from the West Bank and this is absolutely unacceptable,” Erekat said, adding that Washington’s actions were delaying regional peace and making no contribution toward regional peace.

Israel attacked several targets in the Damascus International Airport on Saturday night, Syrian state media said, adding that Syrian air defenses intercepted some of the incoming missiles.

A war monitoring group said the attack targeted an arms shipment meant for Iranian forces or the Iran-backed Lebanese Hezbollah terrorist group.

According to Syrian reports, the target of the strike was a weapons depot in the airport that contained weapons delivered from Iran. Additional reports suggested that the strike destroyed a Russian-made S-200 Syrian missile defense battery.

Additional reports noted underground explosions, which were heard across Damascus. The state news agency SANA posted pictures showing what appeared to be air defenses firing into the air.

“Our air defense systems thwarted an Israeli missile aggression on Damascus International Airport,” Syrian state news agency SANA cited a military source as saying.

Witnesses at a major trade fair in the capital Damascus said they saw flares shooting up into the night sky.

An IDF spokesperson declined to comment, saying that Israel does not discuss foreign reports.

However, in a possible message to Iran, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Sunday morning that the Jewish state’s red lines were “sharper than ever.”

Speaking before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem, the prime minister added: “We must do everything to prevent war. Its victims destroy families and are an open wound in the heart of the nation. At the same time, if war is forced upon us, we must do everything to win it with minimum losses.

“Israel is always working to prevent our enemies from arming themselves with advanced weapons. Our red lines are sharper than ever and our determination to enforce them is stronger than ever,” he said.

On Sunday morning, Israel’s Hadashot TV reported that an Iranian Boeing-made cargo aircraft was targeted in the attack, along with several hangars disguised as belonging to the United Nations and global courier company DHL, in an effort to conceal their true purpose from Israeli intelligence.

Israel rarely acknowledges attacks inside Syria, but has said it would use military action to prevent weapons transfers to its enemies.

Earlier this month, an Israeli military official said the Jewish state has struck over 200 Iranian targets in Syria over the past 18 months.

Israel is widely believed to have been behind a series of airstrikes mainly targeting Iranian and Hezbollah forces in Syria that have joined the country’s war fighting alongside the regime.

An Israeli official said earlier this month that the targets were connected to Iran’s elite Quds force and included air force components, support infrastructure, and weapons storage and manufacturing facilities.

U.S. and Israeli officials have repeatedly insisted that Iran and Hezbollah withdraw from Syria, which shares a border with Israel.