https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13380/europe-iran-appeasement
Iran’s terror campaign is not directed only at the West’s democratic ally in the Middle East, but also at Europe itself.
“The Iranian regime spends nearly a billion dollars a year just to support terrorism”. — Nathan A. Sales, US State Department Coordinator for Counterterrorism, November 13, 2018.
In 1938, the leaders of France and Britain signed the Munich Agreement with Hitler and Mussolini. British PM Neville Chamberlain hailed the agreement as bringing “peace for our time.” The weak and blind European governments trusted the Nazi leadership, who were already planning not only the invasion of their neighbors, but also the Holocaust. Today’s short-sighted effort by Europe to appease Tehran for profit is simply a replica of its 1938 surrender.
In the choice between greed and values, Europe is approaching an existential crossroads with Iran. Europe is both undermining its credibility and surrendering its principles.
For Western governments to defend the interests of businesses is normal. But to betray the Iranian people, who are repressed by their own regime; to undermine Israel’s concerns about Iran’s all too real threats of annihilation; to beg for an accord that fast-tracks Iran’s nuclear weapons capability, and to boycott efforts by the US administration to hold the Iranian regime accountable for its actions — these are not normal. They are lethal.
The Iranian leadership has long called for the destruction of Israel — the country, along with Saudi Arabia, most at risk from a nuclearized and aggressive Islamic Republic. In November, Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani, who has been hailed by the media as a “moderate”, called Israel a “cancerous tumor in the region.” A few months earlier, Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, tweeted similar remarks:
“#Israel is a malignant cancerous tumor in the West Asian region that has to be removed and eradicated: it is possible and it will happen.”