Iran FM: Selective respect for deals now haunting Europe
Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi has said Europe is now facing the consequences of its past betrayal of Iran as it confronts a similar treatment by the United States.
The top diplomat made the remarks in a post on X on Wednesday, reminding how European states violated a nuclear agreement with the Islamic Republic, which had been signed in 2015, on Washington’s cue. The betrayal saw the European trio of the UK, France, and Germany stop their trade with Iran after the US left the nuclear deal in 2018.
According to Araghchi, the same European states, who obeyed the US by disrespecting the deal, had now been forced to stomach the “blowback” from this betrayal.
The backlash, he noted, had manifested itself in the form of the states’ now facing a similar unilateral approach by Washington that is trying to threaten them into handing over Greenland’s control.
US President Donald Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on European countries which oppose his demand to take control of the territory.
Trump threatens to slap tariffs on countries opposed to US Greenland takeoverhttps://t.co/gM26ep7sdL
— Press TV 🔻 (@PressTV) January 16, 2026
The threat, however, runs counter to an EU-US framework trade agreement reached last August that provides for 15-percent tariffs on all European exports and zero-percent tariffs on certain US exports.
Araghchi reminded that Trump’s threat amounted to the US’s “violating an agreement signed with the EU barely six months ago,” suggesting that Europe deserved being shortchanged by the US after it shortchanged the Islamic Republic by “obeying” Washington’s betrayal concerning Tehran.
“Mr. Trump's threat to take over Greenland by any means—unlawful as it is under any conception of international law or even a ‘rules-based order’—could not happen to a more deserving continent.”
‘Breakdown of international order’
The foreign minister, meanwhile, cited Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, as reacting earlier to Trump’s threat by asserting that Trump had to honor its deal with Brussels. “In politics as in business—a deal is a deal," and when counterparts "shake hands, it must mean something," von der Leyen said.
Araghchi said the lesson to be learned from the entire situation was that “either ‘all deals are deals,’ or ‘no handshake means anything.’”
“It is that stark, and the consequence of the latter is nothing short of the breakdown of the international order.”
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