Leaders of three European powers on Sunday expressed continued support for the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, rebuffing an explicit call by President Donald Trump last week to abandon the troubled accord. The Europeans signaled that they could soon invoke a dispute resolution mechanism under the accord after a series of steps by Iran to reduce its commitments to the deal to protest the resumption of harsh economic sanctions imposed after the Trump administration quit the deal in 2018.
The European rejection of the American presidential demand marked the latest sign of a deepening transatlantic rift on Iran, as European hopes that it could broker some sort of US-Iran detente to get through the 2020 US election year without a new Middle East conflict fade. This has been exacerbated by differing Trump administration and European assessments of recent protests in Iran, including those expressing anger at the government in Tehran in the wake of Iran's admission that it accidentally shot down Ukrainian International Airlines Flight 752, killing all 176 people aboard.