Debate: Situation in Iran and Iraq following recent escalations
Date: TUESDAY, 14 JANUARY 2020
Speaker: Josep Borrell Fontelles
Language: FR

D’abord, je voulais vous dire que personne n’a abandonné l’accord sur le nucléaire iranien. Nobody has abandoned it. It’s not me who believes that the JCPOA is essential for our security and has to be kept; it’s the Foreign Affairs Council and it is also the three Ministers of the E3 who share this point of view.  I know that there is a certain contradiction between the letter that I received signed by the Foreign Affairs Minister of the United Kingdom, and the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom saying something which looks quite different from the letter I have read, but what counts for me is the letter, which is an official document which has to follow my action. The British Minister says that the action they are proposing is not to abandon the deal and substitute the Obama deal with the Trump deal. It says that they want to keep the deal alive and what they want is to use this mechanism, this process, in order to have leverage in regard to Iran.  No, nobody has abandoned the deal. The International Atomic Energy Agency continues to monitor and inspect Iran’s nuclear activities, and let’s not forget that the JCPOA is embodied in a United Nations Security Council resolution. It’s not something that we Europeans wrote one night here together. It took 10 years to reach this deal and it was approved by a United Nations resolution, which nobody has cancelled. It is still alive. So don’t blame me and say, ‘Mr Borrell, you have to change your mind’. I’m coming here to explain not my mind – that too – but mainly what the Foreign Affairs Council, after a long debate, has decided and what the letter from the three Ministers says. We are certainly strongly committed to defending Iraq’s sovereignty, its territorial integrity and the importance of Iraqi ownership of the country’s internal political reform process. When my colleagues in the Foreign Affairs Council give me a mandate to do whatever I can, to use all the tools of diplomacy and to talk with everybody – everybody means, I say it again, everybody – in order to look for a regional political solution, I understand that it is an invitation to keep in touch with the Iraqi Government. Well, for the time being, the Iraqi Government is a caretaker government, but immediately afterwards – this meeting was on Friday – I kept in touch with the Iraqi Government, even if it is a caretaker government, and on Monday, the Vice—Minister for Foreign Affairs of Iraq was here having political consultations with the Secretary—General of the European External Action Service, and we agreed that we have to do more.  Someone asked me who can do more and how. Well, just by developing the Association Agreement that we signed, which was ratified and entered into force in 2018, just doing that is a lot of things. It is a lot of work and a lot of possibilities. We have a mission there and we can reinforce this mission. This Association Agreement opens the door to a lot of relationships on trade, economics and security, and certainly we have to decide what we are going to do from the point of view of the foreign, defence and security policy with the mission that we have there.  The soundest thing would be to reinforce it in order to help the Iraqi Government to avoid the country falling apart in any way because, after listening to all of you, I understand that all of you are completely aware of the very dramatic consequences that could come for our security if we have a crisis in Iraq similar to the one we have been witnessing in Syria.  That is why in the next days and weeks I will be engaged in a diplomatic consultation with the Iraqis and will offer our support and our help in order to continue the reform process in this country and avoid losing all the process and progress that has been made in the last years.  We can have a lot of discussions about what the future will be, but for the time being one thing is clear: Iran is not a nuclear power today thanks to the JCPOA and I don’t see how we can build an alternative agreement. I really don’t see it. Everybody talks about this deal. Some of you have been curious enough to have a look at it. It is a book like this, thick like this, full of technicalities, which it took 10 years to agree on.  I really don’t believe that it’s going to be easy to build another agreement with the same complexity, dealing, in a much more complex and conflictual environment, with the current situation. So that is why I have to insist that for us Europeans – and I am talking on behalf of the Foreign Affairs Council – we have to do whatever we can in order to make this deal survive, and for that we clearly have to push and influence the Iranians in order to fulfil all their commitments.  But let me tell you one thing that I think I already told you at the beginning. The Americans withdrew unilaterally from this deal and the Iranians have respected their obligation for 14 months without any kind of contretemps. Now they have certainly said that they don’t feel bound by the constraints of this agreement, but it is one thing not to feel bound and another to go over to the other side. There only the International Atomic Energy Agency can tell us how much and when it has happened. That’s why you have to rely on the reports from this Agency that, until now, has been a wise testimony of what is happening there. More engagement with Iraq and try to deal with all parts of the nuclear deal in order to keep it alive. I can certainly also talk about the Ukrainian plane. I can talk and try to answer all the many interesting issues that you have raised during your interventions, but unhappily it would take too long. Let me just say thank you for your contributions. I am sure we will continue to have to deal with this issue in this Parliament.