Europe Vows to Fight for Iran Deal as US Renews Sanctions

• Europe Vows to Fight for Iran Deal as US Renews Sanctions
  by DAVID M. HERSZENHORN, https://www.politico.eu/
  EU seeks to protect European companies doing business with Tehran.
  European leaders said Monday that they were working to preserve the nuclear deal with Iran despite renewed U.S. sanctions against Tehran. Sanctions by the U.S. were set to come back into force on Monday, as a consequence of Donald Trump’s decision to pull out of the deal. 
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  In a joint statement, the European guarantors of the Iran nuclear accord, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), made clear they were actively working to thwart the U.S. sanctions.
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  “We deeply regret the re-imposition of sanctions by the U.S., due to the latter’s withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” the EU’s high representative for foreign affairs, Federica Mogherini, said in the statement, also signed by the foreign ministers Jean-Yves Le Drian of France, Heiko Maas of Germany, and Jeremy Hunt of the United Kingdom.
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  “The JCPOA is working and delivering on its goal, namely to ensure that the Iranian program remains exclusively peaceful, as confirmed by the International Atomic Energy Agency,” they said.
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  The divide between Europe and Washington over the Iran deal is the clearest — and perhaps most consequential — example of the deteriorated relationship between the U.S. and its traditional allies as a result of Trump’s foreign policy decisions. Trump has also driven a wedge between the U.S. and Europe by setting off a global trade war, pulling out of the Paris climate change accord, and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
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  In their statement, the officials said that to thwart U.S. sanctions, they were actively working on “the preservation and maintenance of effective financial channels with Iran, and the continuation of Iran’s export of oil and gas.”
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