A fragile consensus.

• Author: Tertrais, Bruno
• Position: Iran's military power

OVER THE past 25 years, European and American perspectives toward the Islamic Republic of Iran have sometimes converged and sometimes diverged. Initially, Europeans, like Americans, were concerned that Iran would try to export its revolution throughout the Islamic world. France was the target of a vicious Hizballah attack against its peacekeeping forces in Lebanon in 1983, and later of Iranian-sponsored bombings in Paris. The United Kingdom was the victim of Iranian wrath during the Salman Rushdie affair. And many Europeans became hostages of Iranian-sponsored groups in Lebanon. This led the Europeans, in tune with Washington, to support Iraq in various ways during the 1980-88 war with Iran. Notably, the Europeans terminated all assistance to Iran's nuclear program; France and Iran embarked on a bitter legal feud about the shah's $1 billion loan to Paris for a 10 percent share in the EURODIF uranium enrichment consortium, while Germany refused to continue working on the Bushehr power plant (leaving Russia to pick up the pieces).

In the 1990s the European position diverged from that of the United States. While the United States tightened sanctions (in the form of the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act), the EU initiated a policy of engagement with Iran in the hope of using trade as leverage for concessions on human rights and terrorism. A "critical dialogue" was initiated in 1992, upgraded to a "comprehensive dialogue" in 1998 after Muhammad Khatami's election as president. The dialogue was accompanied by significant investments by major European companies. The European Union became Iran's largest trading partner, with European trade constituting 35 percent of Iranian imports in 2004. And while Europeans were clearly aware of Iran's nuclear ambitions, they did not consider it to be a significant problem. I remember European diplomats stating in 2000 that Iran was on track to becoming a democracy and that as a democracy it would give up its nuclear intentions, so American worries were unjustified. So what has changed since then?

The European Wager on Iran

TWO THINGS happened in 2003 that profoundly altered European attitudes. First, the evidence that Iran was indeed pursing a nuclear weapons program, already substantial since the revelations made in the summer of 2002, became overwhelming. The work of European intelligence agencies in this regard concurred with the June 2003 IAEA report to its Board of Governors, as much a smoking gun as the agency had ever produced about the country.

The second was the impact of the Iraq War. Despite the heated rhetoric of French and German officials in...