TEHRAN – In a speech on Sunday morning, the leader of the Islamic revolution discussed the AUKUS pact, Iran-Azerbaijan disagreements and the scandalous withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan.

Referring to the AUKUS pact, the leader said: “In the recent tensions between the Europeans and the United States, in which the Europeans said the Americans stabbed them in the back, the main point is that the Europeans must to secure. with their own forces, independent of NATO, whose main sponsor is the United States ”

This ties in with what Iran has been saying for three years since the United States unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018. The Europeans blindly trusted their ally, and that is what has happened. A breach of trust.

The United States signed a trilateral partnership with the United Kingdom and Australia on September 15, dubbed AUKUS. The pact aims to provide Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.

The EU, and in particular France, strongly protested against the deal. The agreement came as a hard blow for France, economically. They lost a major economic agreement. Some say they’ve lost over $ 56 billion, some say $ 66 billion, and the Guardian even said France lost a $ 90 billion deal. Today, Paris no longer sees Australia and the United States as a friend and ally of nations that cannot be trusted.

The AUKUS Pact drew the attention of commentators and political analysts to a theory first put forward in 2013, and renewed by EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell in December 2020.

“Because the world has changed. It is difficult to claim to be a “political union” capable of acting as a “global actor” and as a “Geopolitical Commission” without being “autonomous”.

So what are the factors that make this concept more relevant than ever? Borrell asked in his article “Why European Strategic Autonomy Matters”.

In the article published on the EU website, he added: “The first is that Europe’s weight in the world is decreasing. Thirty years ago, we represented a quarter of the world’s wealth. It is expected that in 20 years, we will not represent more than 11% of world GNP, far behind China, which will represent double, below 14% for the United States and at par with India.

Borrell also evokes “the transformation of economic interdependence”, in which Europeans have invested a great deal, in particular through “the defense of multilateralism”.

“Today, we are in a situation where economic interdependence becomes politically very conflicting. And what was traditionally called soft power is becoming an instrument of hard power, ”he warned.

The theory of European strategic autonomy seems to be pursued more strictly than before, given Washington’s betrayal of the European bloc by forming an Angelo-Saxon alliance. Washington did so without informing the EU. According to French Foreign Minister Le Drian, this is a “breach of trust”.

It is sad to see that the European Union has taken this decision to distance itself from the United States so late. Former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has repeatedly warned the EU to act independently and not to blindly follow the US. Yet the Europeans have decided to violate their commitments to the JCPOA.

In another part of his speech, the leader called the use of foreign forces to provide security “just an illusion”, saying those with such imaginations will soon take “a heavy blow”.

Iran has repeatedly made it known to its neighbors and to countries in the region that security cannot be bought from the outside. Maybe it’s time for the EU bloc and the West Asian region to listen to Iran.

SA / AP