Why Trump dumped Europe from Iran talks

When President Donald Trump announced a possible U.S.-Iran understanding, he did so after placing calls to a number of regional countries: Saudi Arabia , the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Turkey, Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan, and – separately – Israel . Not a single European capital was on the call list.

As the Quincy Institute’s Executive Vice President, Trita Parsi, noted , “Europe’s near-total absence from the process is striking — though hardly problematic. By this point, Europe’s diplomatic irrelevance in major Middle Eastern diplomacy has become so normalized that its exclusion barely registers.”

Yet this absence and its implications deserve a closer look. How did Europe transition from leading on Iran diplomacy – culminating in the nuclear deal known as Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 – to this level of irrelevance ten years later?

Objectively, there are factors that are beyond Europeans’ control. For one, Trump’s dislike of European leaders is well-established. And the feeling is mutual.

Yet, there is another, deeper reason: in his own erratic way, Trump wants to pacify the Middle East and claim sole credit for that. This is probably why he's been pushing his improbable proposal that all countries in the greater region — from Saudi Arabia to Pakistan — join the Abraham Accords. Sharing a diplomatic trophy with Brussels, Berlin or London would presumably detract from his achievement.

Then there are the regional actors themselves. For the Persian Gulf nations as well as Egypt, Turkey and Pakistan, the stakes of a continued war on Iran are truly existential . As the war has already shown, they are easily within the range of Iranian missiles. A resumption and exacerbation of active hostilities would risk economic collapse, especially of the Gulf states. An implosion of the Iranian state would destabilize borders, provoke uncontrolled migration, and ignite ethnic and sectarian strife on a regional scale.

The consequences for Europe would also be significant: higher energy prices and inflation mean the European Union already is losing €500 million a day , according to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. But this is not a life-and-death matter in the same way it would be for Iran’s neighbors.

This asymmetry of the stakes explains why the Gulf nations, Pakistan, Turkey and Egypt have engaged proactively in favor of diplomacy and de-escalation . And the fact that Trump talks to them would help to embed a potential new Iran deal regionally. That would permanently remove a key complaint of some of Iran’s neighbors, particularly Saudi Arabia and UAE, about former President Barack Obama’s original 2015 deal, which dealt only with the nuclear file.

Yet attributing everything to Trump’s vainglory and regional diplomacy would miss a more difficult truth. After all, geography was no different in 2015 when the E3 (Britain, France and Germany), working with the EU’s high representative for foreign policy, led the way to the JCPOA. In 2026, Europe’s exclusion was not just imposed from outside. It was earned from within – by squandering any leverage Europe enjoyed with Iran.

First, after Trump withdrew from the JCPOA during his first term in 2018, Europe launched INSTEX, a trade vehicle designed to bypass U.S. secondary sanctions on Iran. But it never worked , and thus Iran concluded Europe would posture but ultimately bow to Washington’s wishes. Iranian confidence in Europe was undermined.

Second, in 2025, the E3 triggered the United Nations Security Council’s snapback of nuclear-related sanctions on Iran, even as Russia and China insisted the room for diplomacy had not been exhausted, and Tehran itself had offered new concessions that would preclude weaponization. Tehran took note: Europe had clearly ceased to be an honest broker and had become instead a U.S. auxiliary.

Third, and most decisively, the war in Ukraine changed Europe's entire worldview. After 2022, Brussels embarked on a geopolitical path that divides the world into friends and foes based solely on their stance toward Russia. Iran – which has supplied Moscow with drones – was swiftly placed in the enemy camp.

In the immediate wake of U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran on February 28, European leaders like von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz offered their full-throated support for the initial aim of regime change . In Brussels, the only strategy was transatlantic unity against the purported Russia-Iran axis.

None of this is to excuse the role of Tehran's own choices in recent years that have undermined its relations with Europe. Iran's drone transfers to Russia have been real, destructive, and justifiably condemned. But cause and effect run both ways. Having watched Europe fail to deliver on the JCPOA and increasingly echo the U.S.-Israeli line on its nuclear program, ballistic missiles and regional policies, Tehran concluded it had nothing to gain from Europe.

Moscow, on the other hand, has provided assistance with…