By: Con Coughlin
Source: The Telegraph
Good to see the European Union finally facing up to the reality of the threat posed by Iran's nuclear programme. The EU's decision today to impose a wide range of sanctions against Tehran is as welcome as it is overdue.
Despite Iran's consistent refusal to comply with its international obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, many European governments have preferred appeasement to hard-headed confrontation with the mullahs over their conduct. This is partly because many European governments do not want to jeopardise their lucrative trade ties with Tehran, and partly because they are anxious to avoid a re-run of the robust diplomatic attitude to Saddam Hussein, which led to the ill-fated invasion of Iraq five years ago.
But now, it seems, the penny is starting to drop. Last week the EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana travelled to Tehran with a comprehensive package to resolve the dispute over Iran's insistence on persisting with its uranium enrichment programme. To date he had heard nothing back.
Now the EU has hit back by imposing a freeze on all the European assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest commercial bank, plus many other punitive measures. (Unfortunately for the EU, as I wrote in the Daily Telegraph two weeks ago, many of Bank Melli's assets have already been repatriated to Iran before the measures came into place.)
Perhaps the Iranians will now finally wake up to the fact that not even the pacifist-minded Europeans are going to put up with its refusal to cooperate on its nuclear programme much longer.