speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo<\/a> extended U.S. policy way beyond curtailing Iran\u2019s nuclear activities.<\/p>\nIran, he said, must stop supporting Hezbollah, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, support disarming Shi\u2019ite militias in Iraq and withdraw from Syria. The United States would work to counteract its cyber activities, track down its operatives and proxies and \u201ccrush\u201d them.<\/p>\n
Israel is now destroying more and more Iranian assets in Syria with U.S. backing.<\/p>\n
Moreover, a wedge is being driven between Russia and Iran. Russia needs stability in the region to safeguard its interests. The last thing it wants is for Israel to be drawn further into Syria. So Russia is trying to keep Iranian forces away from Israel\u2019s northern border and has said the Islamic Republic should pull its forces out of Syria once a political settlement is reached.<\/p>\n
Galvanized by the new U.S.-led dynamic, the Iranian people are continuing to revolt. There\u2019s now a Twitter hashtag in Farsi calling for regime change, as well as another that reads: \u201cThank you Pompeo.\u201d If this escalates, the Iranian people can bring down the regime.<\/p>\n
In the space of a few months, therefore, it has gone from being an unstoppable regional force to scrabbling to survive. So in desperation, it is playing two of its remaining cards.<\/p>\n
The first was using its proxies in Gaza to unleash the missile barrage against southern Israel. The second is its urgent wooing of the European Union to persuade it to defy the American call to impose global sanctions.<\/p>\n
At this moment, the European Union chooses to back Israel against the Gaza missile barrage\u2014the same European Union that all but ignored the missile barrages that led to the 2014 Gaza war in which, of course, it denounced Israel for finally defending itself.<\/p>\n
When it came to the Gaza border riots, however, the European Union was not united in its condemnation of Israel. The Czech Republic Foreign Minister Martin Stropnick\u00fd said rushing the security fence should be regarded as a form of terrorism.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic had blocked an E.U. statement condemning the U.S. embassy move while other countries, including Slovakia, Greece and Poland, reportedly also expressed reservations. On Monday, European foreign ministers discussed Gaza at their monthly meeting but failed to issue a statement, a sign they didn\u2019t agree.<\/p>\n
But the real reason for the E.U.\u2019s surprising change of tone is surely that the presence in the White House of President Donald Trump has changed everything.<\/p>\n
America backed Israel strongly over the Gaza riots. While eight E.U. members lined up at the United Nations to call on Israel to refrain from using \u201cexcessive force\u201d against \u201cpeaceful protests,\u201d the U.S. ambassador Nikki Haley said the violence came from those who rejected the existence of the State of Israel. \u201cSuch a motivation\u2014the destruction of a United Nations member state\u2014is so illegitimate as to not be worth our time in the Security Council, other than the time it takes to denounce it.\u201d<\/p>\n
The European Union is beginning to grasp that the implicit criticism of those who fail to join the United States in supporting Israel carries consequences. President Trump has made it clear that he expects European and other countries to support him in imposing sanctions against Iran. If they don\u2019t, they will have to choose: trade with Iran or trade with America. They can\u2019t do both.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Italy is politically imploding and threatening the whole E.U. project. The financier George Soros has said the European Union is now facing an existential crisis.<\/p>\n
Is the E.U. going to choose this moment to get up America\u2019s nose still further? Hardly. So it was presumably anxious to demonstrate to Trump that, despite its earlier sanitizing of Hamas as \u201cunarmed protesters,\u201d it was really against Hamas after all.<\/p>\n
If so, such declarations won\u2019t cut it. For the world has reached a tipping point, and Iran is key. To avoid a truly terrible conflagration, the Iranian regime has to be brought down.<\/p>\n
Israel, the United States, the Gulf states and the Iranian people are behind such a strategy. Astoundingly, Britain and the European Union stand with the regime against them. They must now decide if they will join the attempt to defeat the forces of evil\u2014or else suffer the consequences.<\/p>\n
(Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a column for JNS every two weeks. Currently a columnist for \u201cThe Times of London,\u201d her personal and political memoir, \u201cGuardian Angel,\u201d has been published by Bombardier, which has also published her first novel, \u201cThe Legacy,\u201d released in April. Her work can be found at her website, <\/em>www.melaniephillips.com<\/em><\/a>.)<\/em><\/p>\n
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