European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen spent most of Monday in Bavaria at a
political party conference of the Christian Social Union | Philipp Guelland/EPA
As crisis
engulfs Middle East, EU is off the pace
Von der
Leyen struggles with early test for ‘geopolitical Commission.’
By DAVID M.
HERSZENHORN, RYM MOMTAZ AND JACOPO BARIGAZZI 1/6/20, 8:50 PM CET Updated
1/6/20, 10:51 PM CET
With the
Middle East in meltdown and fears of "World War III" trending on
social media, the leader of the EU's new "geopolitical Commission"
was nowhere to be geo-located.
European
Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who aims to make the bloc a bigger
player on the world stage, made her first public comments about the escalating
hostilities between Iran and the United States on Monday evening — more than
three days after an airstrike ordered by U.S. President Donald Trump killed
Iranian general Qassem Soleimani.
"Europe
has a special responsibility here," von der Leyen said in the statement,
posted on the Commission's website. "As tensions mount, Europe is talking
to all those involved." She declared a need "to halt the cycle of
violence," urged Iran to fully comply with the nuclear deal known as the
Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, and said she would convene a
special meeting of the College of Commissioners on Wednesday to debrief on all
of the diplomatic efforts.
But for
some observers, it was far too late.
"Stop
your holidays and start saying something!" one EU diplomat said earlier in
the day, expressing bewilderment at the absence of any comments from the
Commission president on Iran, as well as an announcement a week earlier by
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan that he would send military forces to
Libya.
Ursula von der Leyen's days of silence stood in sharp
contrast to European Council President Charles Michel.
The Middle
East crisis exploded little more than a month after the new Commission took office
and with most EU institutions still shuttered for the New Year holiday. The
sluggish response from the new EU executive was a stark reminder that it will
have its work cut out to be taken seriously as a geopolitical player by major
powers.
The drama
exposed — once again — just how much of a bystander the EU remains when it
comes to serious military conflicts, whether on the European Continent, as in
eastern Ukraine, just across the Mediterranean, as with the unfolding proxy war
in Libya, or in the wider neighborhood, as with the U.S. airstrike that killed
Soleimani in Iraq.
And it
highlighted the bloc's continuing struggle to speak with one voice when it
comes to foreign policy — a long-standing, structural and historical challenge
that von der Leyen and Josep Borrell, the bloc's foreign policy chief, had
pledged to address.
Von der
Leyen's days of silence stood in sharp contrast to European Council President
Charles Michel, who issued a statement Friday within hours of the U.S.
airstrike, as well as a post on Twitter, calling for an end to "the cycle
of violence, provocations and retaliations."
And it left
officials struggling to explain how the new "geopolitical"
Commission, which took office on December 1, was any different from its
predecessors, even as Borrell and his team were working in overdrive to keep
track of the fast-moving events.
Borrell
first issued a statement on Friday evening, as well as follow-up statements
through the weekend. Aides to von der Leyen said he was the Commission's point
person and that the president was in close consultation with him.
Invitation
to Brussels
While EU
leaders generally called for calm, and Borrell invited the Iranian foreign
minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, to visit Brussels for talks, there were notable
differences in the reactions from major European capitals — none of which were
sufficiently positive about the U.S. action as to win applause or gratitude in
Washington.
The biggest
European powers, Germany, France and the U.K. — all of which currently hold
seats on the U.N. Security Council — found themselves forced to walk a
diplomatic high wire: not condoning an assassination, but also not condemning
the U.S., their still-crucial ally; and while trying to keep Washington on
side, also not losing their opening to engage with Iran.
But each
took a slightly different tack.
The U.K.
foreign secretary, Dominic Raab, cited the "aggressive threat posed by the
Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani." The German foreign minister,
Heiko Maas, issued a statement that declared Iran responsible for the
escalation in tensions that led to the attack on Soleimani but also criticized
the missile strike ordered by Trump. "This action has not made it easier
to reduce tensions," Maas said.
France's
initial reaction focused on its two most important concerns in the region:
preserving the ability of forces within the anti-ISIS coalition in Iraq to
fulfill their mission, and trying to contain further Iranian violations of the
nuclear deal.
"This is a U.S. decision. It is not a decision
taken neither by the global coalition nor NATO" — Jens Stoltenberg, NATO
secretary-general
At first,
Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian avoided characterizing the U.S. attack,
instead referring to the "latest developments in Iraq, namely the actions
undertaken last night," in a press release after he spoke to U.S.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo Friday.
By Sunday,
the French position became more explicit. President Emmanuel Macron
"underlined his full solidarity with our allies in the face of attacks
over recent weeks against Coalition forces in Iraq," and "expressed
his preoccupation concerning the destabilizing activities of the Quds Force
under Qassem Soleimani's command, and reiterated the necessity for Iran to put
an end to them now, and abstain from any military escalation that could further
destabilize the region."
Much of the
tougher European language on Iran came after Pompeo complained on Friday that
"the Europeans haven't been as helpful as I wish that they could be."
This more
assertive language was also largely reflected in a joint statement by France,
Germany and the U.K. — who together comprise the "E3" guarantors of
the Iran unclear deal. The only hint of any criticism of the U.S. in the E3
statement was a call "on all parties to exercise utmost restraint and
responsibility."
Trump's
best source of solidarity seemed to come from NATO headquarters, where
Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg on Monday convened an emergency meeting of
the North Atlantic Council. The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison,
was in the room, and officials from the State Department and the Pentagon were
also piped in by videoconference from Washington.
"The
U.S. provided the rationale behind the action against General Soleimani and we
had several briefers from the United States from State and from Pentagon and
they briefed and explained to other allies why they took this action,"
Stoltenberg told reporters after the meeting.
Stoltenberg
repeated several times that all NATO allies had long voiced concern about
Iran's hostile behavior, and that they remained supportive of the alliance's
role in the international coalition against the Islamic State as well as the
NATO mission in Iraq. Stoltenberg said allies were prepared to resume those
efforts when circumstances permit.
Still,
despite the show of solidarity, Stoltenberg declined to offer any opinion of
the killing of Soleimani. "This is a U.S. decision," he said.
"It is not a decision taken neither by the global coalition nor NATO. But
all allies are concerned about Iran's destabilizing activities in the
region."
Talking to
Tehran
Back in the
European Quarter of Brussels, the view of Trump's action was even more
ambiguous.
Borrell, in
his initial statement Friday and follow-up comments over the weekend, was
extremely even-handed, expressing "concern" about the killing of
Soleimani but not voicing any condemnation of Tehran or Washington. And while
Borrell spoke by phone with Zarif on Saturday night and invited him to
Brussels, a spokesman for the high representative said Monday he had no
specific information about any similar conversation with Pompeo.
The
spokesman, Peter Stano, in response to repeated questioning at a regular
Commission news conference on Monday, said only that Borrell had spoken or
would speak to all of the EU's partners in his effort to help de-escalate the
tensions.
"There
is a lot of activity, a lot of activity is going on in terms of finding ways
how the EU can contribute towards de-escalation," Stano said. "What
is very important is that the high representative is very much engaged in
contacts with all the relevant partners to find a way how to contribute to the
de-escalation."
Borrell
described his call with Zarif in a letter sent to EU foreign ministers on
Sunday and seen by POLITICO. One senior diplomat said he viewed that letter as
an effort by Borrell to compensate for Michel — the new Council president who
represents the leaders of the EU's member countries — having been the quickest
EU official to react. The Council chief being first off the mark was “very
unusual," the senior diplomat said.
“Europe is
not used to U.S. aggressive unilateralism" — EU diplomat
Another
diplomat said Trump's actions had left officials deeply unsettled.
“Europe is not used to U.S. aggressive
unilateralism," the diplomat said.
"We
don’t really know what to do," said the diplomat who had wondered why von
der Leyen did not speak out over the holidays. This diplomat noted with alarm
that the U.K. and Baltic countries had expressed a level of support for the
U.S. that was clearly not shared by other EU member countries, and said those
concerns were only heightened by the "deafening silence of von der Leyen."
The
diplomat complained that von der Leyen is talking about tackling climate change
while the EU lets its neighborhood fall "into the hands of Turkey and
Russia and we risk an escalation in the Middle East."
At the
Commission's Monday news conference, von der Leyen's spokesman, Eric Mamer,
responded to a question about the president's own engagement by saying she had
been in close contact with Borrell, head of the EU's External Action Service,
and would issue a statement later in the day.
Von der
Leyen spent most of Monday in Bavaria at a political party conference of the
Christian Social Union, the sister party of her own political party, the Christian
Democratic Union.
Her
statement was finally posted on the Commission's website late Monday afternoon.
A senior EU
diplomat said the latest Middle East crisis had highlighted a lack of
inter-institutional coordination in Brussels: "We need first of all to put
some order at home in the relationship between the Commission, the Council and
the External Service."
The EU was
also struggling to salvage credibility on the Iran nuclear deal.
No sooner
had Borrell issued a statement trying to emphasize the EU's one concrete role,
as coordinator of the effort to preserve the pact, than Iranian leaders
declared their latest step, backing away from their obligations under the deal
— further deepening doubts that the accord, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan
of Action or JCPOA, could ever be saved.
Privately,
officials said that von der Leyen's initial silence had caught other EU leaders
off-guard, and her repeated insistence that she is at the helm of a
geopolitical Commission had left Borrell and others concerned about not getting
out in front of their boss.
As a
result, the Commission seemed slow to react to aspects of the conflict other than
those related directly to the nuclear deal — including threats of military
retaliation by Iran's leaders, and Trump's threat to bomb Iranian cultural
sites, which was immediately denounced by Zarif and others as a threat to
commit war crimes.
London appeared
to warn Trump against taking such a drastic step. “There are international
conventions in place that prevent the destruction of cultural heritage,” a
spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Monday.
Still, even
as European allies seemed to keep some distance from Trump, there were
indications that some in Iran still viewed the West, collectively, as an enemy.
As hundreds
of thousands of people poured onto the streets for Soleimani’s funeral on
Monday, some carried signs that showed pictures of Macron and German Chancellor
Angela Merkel in the crosshairs of a weapon, alongside similar pictures of
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Annabelle
Dickson in London contributed reporting.
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