Brussels – The EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, reiterates the call for “utmost restraint for all actors” following reports of the attack carried out this morning (April 19) by Israel against a military base in Isfahan, a province in central Iran. Tel Aviv’s reaction to the hundreds of missiles and drones launched by Tehran on April 13 comes despite the appeal of the European Council to take every precaution to avert a dangerous escalation.
In Brussels, they turn a blind eye and throw water on the fire: “We have seen a very limited impact,” said a senior EU official: “It is true that we have asked for nothing to be done, but it is a minor action.” In short, the line is that if this was the feared retaliation to the Iranian attack, then one can breathe a sigh of relief as the explosions in Isfahan allegedly caused no significant damage, according to Iranian authorities, and, more importantly, because Tehran allegedly has no intention of responding to the provocation for now.
The April 13 Iranian offensive, which the regime had to launch in response to the Israeli bombing of Tehran’s embassy compound in Damascus, was “a huge strategic mistake,” a senior official said in Brussels as “it is obvious that Israel now derives a political advantage in Gaza from Iran’s attack.” It shifted the focus to the regional scale of the conflict – overshadowing the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza – and inevitably brought the West closer to Israel. So much so that even at the level of the 27 Member States, while the destruction of the Iranian embassy in Syria by the Israel Defense Forces was not condemned because “member states see it differently,” the EU countries stated in the conclusions of the European summit that they would “take additional restrictive measures against Iran” in response to its dangerous military aggression.
There could be a political agreement as early as Monday, April 22, at the meeting of EU foreign ministers in Luxembourg. “We have been discussing this for some time already. The Iranian attack on Israel has only strengthened the discussion,” EU sources explain. In addition to the sanctions regime for human rights violations, the Islamic Republic is also subject to a framework of restrictive measures for the transfer of military drones to Russia.
The idea of the EU External Action Service (EEAS) is to expand the sanction regime by including missiles as well and to extend it geographically, i.e., by sanctioning not only Moscow-bound equipment but also the transfer of drones and missiles to non-state groups and organizations close to Tehran in the region. The EEAS would also be looking for legal holds to hit Iran with sanctions not only on the transfer of missiles and drones but their production as well. However, the green light that may come on Monday concerns only the framework: “So far, there are no names and entities,” the source clarified.
English version by the Translation Service of Withub
