They have been laughing at his ineptness for a while, even having been caught on camera at at the last summit get together…
The days of them buddying up to the current American President are over…
Watching Trump muddling thru his foreign policy on Iran isn’t changing anything…
While Trump has been reviled by Europe’s establishment from the day he took office, his other major “outrages” — such as the decisions to pull out of the Paris climate accord and the Iranian nuclear deal or to impose tariffs on EU steel — were well-telegraphed.
No one saw the Iranian escalation coming. Within hours of Soleimani’s assassination, Europe’s shock over the Iranian general’s killing morphed into anger at Trump.
So far, the European response has focused on trying to placate Iran instead of displaying solidarity with the U.S.
One of the indirect victims of the U.S. strike may prove to be the transatlantic relationship.
Just how bad is it? Even as Iran’s supreme leader promised “severe” retaliation for the killing over the weekend, EU foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, invited Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for a sitdown in Brussels. The U.S., which recently placed sanctions on Zarif, won’t even grant him a visa to visit the United Nations.
Angela Merkel, Europe’s de facto supreme leader, responded to the crisis by arranging a “working meeting” later this week — in Moscow.
Berlin appears to have concluded that sitting down with Vladimir Putin (who metwith Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad this week to celebrate their success in crushing Syria’s civil war) would be more productive than a trip to Washington, on paper still Germany’s most important ally….