German Chancellor Angela Merkel announced that while Europe continues to support the Iranian nuclear agreement, the “aggressive tendencies” of the Ayatollah regime are apparent and must be dealt with. “What needs mentioning is the omnipresent nuclear threat. We Europeans continue to support the agreement with Iran but we are also seeing aggressive tendencies from Iran so the question is how the Arab League and the European Union deal with Iran. That’s something we have to discuss together. So as you can see, this is a summit with a lot of topics and surely also with a lot of differing opinions, yet the common goal will be to solve the problems,” Merkel said.
While the German Chancellor called for a united front to tackle Iran’s malign activities; The United Kingdom has announced its decision to add the political-wing of the Iranian-proxy Hezbollah to Britain’s list of terror organizations. The unprecedented move was made after British Authorities said they can no longer distinguish between the organization’s military and political wings, both of which funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran. Following the announcement, Home Secretary Sajid Javid stressed that his decision to proscribe the group in its entirety emanated from the fact that Hezbollah was “continuing in its attempts to destabilize the fragile situation in the Middle East.”
In response to the British decision, however, EU Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini declared that the European Union does not see eye-to-eye with its soon-to-be former member. In a joint press conference with her Lebanese counterpart during a visit to Beirut, Mogherini emphasized that “The decision that the U.K. Interior Minister announced today, is a national decision of -yes- a member state, still a member state, but still it’s a national domestic decision that doesn’t affect the European Union position – that is well known and is not changing.”