Iran’s mullahs cannot afford to ignore EU but it’s what Obama says that counts

The strength of response of European governments to the crisis in Tehran is a welcome — if surprising — step. It has been made possible by President Obama’s considered restraint, reversing the pattern of the past two decades when the US has talked tough to Iran while Germany and Italy, more than others, have protected their commercial ties with Iran.

The EU governments’ new tough talk will not change the outcome within Iran. That will depend on how much the followers of Mir Hossein Mousavi are prepared to risk, whether they can carry many in the military with them (so far not) and how much violence the regime is prepared to use in putting down the uproar. A lot, we should assume. The bloodiness of the 1979 revolution is one indication; so, explicitly, are the warnings by Supreme Leader Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamanei that he would hold Mousavi and others responsible for deaths and injuries by the security forces.

But in making its calculations the regime cannot ignore the international opprobrium and penalties that would follow a brutal crackdown — that is, one even worse than there has been already. Yesterday Italy said that it was willing to open its embassy in Tehran to wounded protesters in co-ordination with other European nations. Italy and Germany are Iran’s biggest EU trading partners. Italy’s move follows Sweden’s question to other European Union countries of whether they might jointly open their embassies to demonstrators, a discussion that has not yet gone far but sends a signal to Tehran about the strength of feeling across the EU.

Britain, inevitably, has come in for specially sharp attacks from Tehran after Gordon Brown’s condemnation of the handling of the election, on top of the deep-seated Iranian suspicion of British designs on the country. Britain and France, with the US, have argued for tougher sanctions against Iran for continuing with its nuclear programme.

More on www.timesonline.co.uk

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