Ellie Geranmayeh is a senior policy fellow and deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations. She specializes in European foreign policy in relation to Iran, particularly on the nuclear and regional dossiers and sanctions policy.
The assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani is a turning point for relations between the United States and Iran. It also pulls U.S. allies in Europe deeper into uncharted waters, and threatens to leave European forces on the ground caught in the crossfire of escalation between Tehran and Washington.
U.S. President Donald Trump has removed a top Iranian military operative blamed for bloodshed in the region. But in doing so, he has exposed every American boot on the ground in the Middle East to possible retaliatory attacks and opened up new space for Iran to up the ante. By publicly and boastfully targeting a high profile confidant of Iran’s supreme leader, Trump has also rewritten the rules of engagement that had, for the large part of the past decade, allowed Iran and the U.S. to reduce the risk of collision in their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
For European capitals, this means their worst predictions — they warned the Trump administration that withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal would trigger a chain of escalation with Iran — are becoming reality.
The response from Tehran could be immediate or more long term, ranging from military action in the region to cyber attacks inside the U.S. and heavy political pushback. Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has repeatedly warned that there would not be war with the U.S. and Iran has so far acted in a calculated and rational fashion to Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign. If this position holds, Tehran will attempt to manage the risk of direct conflict, continuing to deploy asymmetric tactics to undermine U.S. interests, albeit with the red lines now redrawn.
The gravity and scale of Iranian compliance will be influenced by the recent escalation with the U.S.
The extensive U.S. military presence in the Middle East and Afghanistan means the U.S. is likely to bear the brunt of retaliation. Iran has deep ties to both state and non-state actors across Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Yemen that can be utilized to inflict pain on America. Soleimani’s death has already triggered a new decline in the Trump administration’s relations with Baghdad that may extend to Kabul, and is also likely to heat up the long debate inside Tehran over how far to push U.S. military forces out of neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the impact of Soleimani’s assassination also carries significant implications for global and European diplomacy. On the political front, Tehran will utilize this as an opportunity to win the blame game on the international scene, casting the U.S. strike as a highly disproportionate act akin to a declaration of war and attempting to use it to deepen the existing wedge between Europe and Washington.
The timing of the assassination comes days before an expected fifth Iranian announcement to further wind down obligations under the nuclear agreement. The gravity and scale of Iranian compliance will be influenced by the recent escalation with the U.S. Iran could now take a much more provocative move on the nuclear file as part of its retaliation, including restricting access of international monitors on the ground that oversee Iran’s nuclear program.
The nuclear deal remains at the heart of Europe’s policy toward Iran. Before Soleimani’s death, France, the United Kingdom and Germany had already signaled they were close to triggering the dispute resolution mechanism under the nuclear agreement in response to Iranian non-compliance. If Tehran takes drastic steps on the nuclear file, it could mark the total collapse of the agreement.
French President Emmanuel Macron, left, and U.S. President Donald Trump | Ludovic Marin/AFP via Getty Images
Europe, which has so far resisted calls to join Washington’s “maximum pressure” policy against Tehran, will need to prepare for a worse security dynamic across the Middle East and undertake intense diplomatic efforts to protect its own forces on the ground, which are now at increased risk.
Ironically, despite the rivalry with Iran, Arab Gulf countries can be useful partners for Europe in finding an off-ramp through diplomacy. Iran’s Arab neighbours have become increasingly worried that they are exposed to heavy costs for any military escalation between the U.S. and Iran. Europe should step up cooperation with the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Kuwait and Iraq to jointly prevent escalation.
For now, attempts to broker a resumption of negotiations between the U.S. and Tehran proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron at the U.N. General Assembly seem far out of reach. Instead, Europe’s immediate focus should be high level shuttle diplomacy aimed at protecting what can be salvaged of the nuclear deal and creating a cooling-off period against further attacks inside an already fragile Iraq.
In the space of six months, the U.S. and Iran have gone from targeting drones, oil installations and bases, to killing personnel. It is still unclear how and when Iran will choose to respond to Soleimani’s assassination. But the new commander of the Quds Force — appointed within 12 hours of Soleimani’s death — will no doubt be eager to demonstrate his willingness to exact revenge against America.
When that happens, neither the Middle East nor Europe will be isolated from the blowback.