Iran: EU and Trump mark divorce on world stage

urope’s split with the US on foreign policy has widened after three EU states created a new company designed to skirt US sanctions on Iran.

Britain, France, and Germany registered the new entity, called an Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges, or Instex, in Paris on Thursday (31 January).

It is to be managed by a German former banker, Per Fischer, and is to start trade in food and medicine with Iran in the next few months, excluding US banks and US dollar transactions, in a way that removes the legal basis for the US to sanction firms which take part…

It also comes amid a laundry list of other EU scraps with Trump - on Nato, Russia, Syria, Israel, free trade, and climate change - as well as the US leader’s verbal tirades against Europe.

Instex would facilitate “legitimate trade between European economic operators and Iran” and would be “open to economic operators from third countries who wish to trade with Iran” in future, Britain, France, and Germany said in a joint statement.

The idea is to use it to trade oil and gas down the line.

But the project has a wider potential to “teach its managers lessons that can be applied to other cases [besides Iran] in the future,” Jarrett Blan, a former state department official now with the Carnegie Europe think tank in Washington, said earlier this month.

The US has also threatened to punish British, Dutch, French and German companies taking part in Russia’s plan to build a new gas pipeline to Germany, called Nord Stream 2.