Abstract
France, Germany, the UK plus the High Representative (the E3/EU) shaped their initiative towards Iran’s nuclear issue in ways that were compatible with the EU foreign policy discourse spelled out in the 2003 Strategy against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction and especially the European Security Strategy (ESS). The E3 framed Iran’s behaviour as a deviance from the conduct it was supposed to follow as a non-nuclear party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. This was clearly in keeping with the underlying theme of the ESS that proliferators put themselves “outside the bounds” of the international society. The EU had a responsibility to bring them into the fold of multilaterally accepted rules and practices. Both diagnostic and prognostic frameworks used by the E3/EU to construe the problem (Iran’s behaviour) and the solution (restoration of a rules-based non-proliferation system) were compatible with the established EU foreign policy discourse, whereby the E3/EU group could endure over time.
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Notes
- 1.
Greece, to make one example, imported over 1 billion euro worth of oil products from Iran in 2004, a sizeable figure indeed. Compare this with France’s 1.3 billion euro worth of oil imports from Iran in 2004; given the difference in GDP between France (1630 billion euros) and Greece (179bn) at the time, Greek energy imports from Iran were proportionally much more relevant for the country’s energy security than French imports (Eurostat 2015). Data on EU member states’ trade exchanges with third countries are available on the website of the European Commission, Directorate-General Trade, Export Helpdesk: http://exporthelp.europa.eu/thdapp/display.htm;jsessionid=916E3376F3D5A2C0DE69E7C25406CF48?page=st%2fst_Statistics.html&docType=main&languageId=en
- 2.
Interview with a senior E3 official, 21 April 2009.
- 3.
Ahlström (2005: 32–33) assigns to Lindh the merit of having initiated the debate that would lead to the ESS. I was unable to ascertain whether Lindh’s initiative preceded that of the E3 or went on in parallel.
- 4.
- 5.
In October 2007 The Telegraph reported about an “understanding” between President Bush and Prime Minister Gordon Brown that UK forces would help a US military strike against Iran’s IRGC facilities for supporting anti-coalition forces in Iraq (Shipman 2007); while the rationale of the attack was not Iran’s nuclear programme, it is safe to say that the programme would have become a target in a possible escalation with Iran. Former British Prime Minister Blair spoke publicly of the possibility of using force against Iran’s nuclear facilities after he left office, in 2010 (Tran 2010). British defence secretary Liam Fox seemed to imply that force may be used when he said before the House of Commons on 31 January 2011 that it was necessary “to act in accordance with [the] warning” that Iran might have had nuclear weapons in 2012 (quoted in Ellner 2013: 239).
- 6.
While never a formal colony, Iran/Persia was a critical theatre in the ‘Great Game’, the competition between the British Empire and Tsarist Russia for control of the area south and east of the Caucasus and west of India. Between the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the British and Russians exerted almost total control over Persia, even occupying parts of it militarily (Frankopan 2015: 293–321). After the fall of the tsars in 1917, the British sway over Tehran solidified, eventually leading London to back Reza Shah Pahlavi (the father of the dynast ousted in 1979) in his bid for power (ibidem: 341–356). Persia was invaded and shortly occupied by British and Soviet forces during the Second World War to secure Iranian oil wells and Allied supply lines. Later, the British MI6 intelligence service was involved, with support from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), in the 1953 coup that removed Mossadeq and restored Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi (the son) to power (ibidem: 399–418).
- 7.
The FAC refrained from using the E3/EU+3 formulation even when it welcomed the JCPOA in July 2015, notwithstanding the fact that the phrase was on display on backdrops and banners in the room where HR Mogherini and Foreign Minister Zarif held press conferences and was used extensively in both the JCPOA and UNSCR 2231. Similarly to what it did in November 2004, in July 2015 the Council preferred to spell out fully the names of the member countries of the E3/EU (Council of the European Union 2015).
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Alcaro, R. (2018). The Discourse: Why the E3/EU Endured. In: Europe and Iran’s Nuclear Crisis. Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74298-4_5
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