The European Union will tighten sanctions against Iran in retaliation for Tehran’s missile and drone attack on Israel. A move which, however, may not have the desired effects, if it ever has any effects, given that Tehran has already demonstrated its ability to circumvent the restrictive measures imposed by the West. The European Council in its conclusions condemned “strongly and unequivocally” the Iranian attack, which was launched in response to the April 1 attack on its embassy in Damascus, Syria, in which 16 people were killed, including including a general of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Mohammad Reza Zahedi.
The 27 leaders, in the conclusions of the Summit, reaffirmed Europe’s commitment to Israel’s security and invited “to demonstrate maximum moderation and to refrain from any action that could increase tensions in the region”. This last message is addressed in particular to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, because everyone knows that a further harsh response from Tel Aviv would make a conflict inevitable, with devastating consequences for the entire region but also for Europe. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, usually very soft on Israel, said it was important that the Jewish state “does not respond with a massive attack of its own.”
The EU already has several programs targeting Iran for human rights abuses, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and Tehran’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine. Now the idea is to hit its ability to create drones and missiles harder. The system of sanctions to stop the export of components for the production of drones and missiles to Iran has already existed since July 2023. “We must review this system in order to expand it and make it more efficient”, said the High Representative for EU foreign policy, Josep Borrell. The details of the intervention will be discussed at the EU Foreign Affairs Council next Monday (22 April), but these sanctions could only have a symbolic value.
As the US think tank Atlantic Council explains, despite heavy US and EU sanctions, Tehran continued to provide more than 700 million dollars a year to support armed groups, including the Lebanese Hezbollah (whose armed wing was added on the EU terrorist list, but not the political one), and has so far managed to send up to 100 million dollars a year to Hamas, another group included in the terrorist list by both the US and the EU. The Islamic Republic also managed to provide support to Vladimir Putin’s Russia’s war against Ukraine, sending Shahed-136 drones (UAV) to Moscow, despite the program already being subject to sanctions by the US Treasury Department.
Some EU countries would also like to introduce sanctions against the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, but the issue is complicated from a legal point of view, because to do so would require a national authority of the bloc to discover that the group has been involved in terrorist activities. Furthermore, according to several analysts, it is unlikely that Iran will face very severe economic sanctions, due to concerns about a possible increase in the price of oil, of which Iran is the world’s fourth largest exporter.
