Under this condition, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Egypt where he tried to overshadow the Syrian troop withdrawal by announcing that a conference will be held in Warsaw on the Middle East with the focus on Iran. He also levelled numerous charges against Iran and concluded that the meeting aimed to counter what he termed the “destabilizing” role of Iran in the region.

But after it became clear that the US approach and the target of the Warsaw meeting against Iran would discourage many from participating in the confab, US officials changed the wording and this time said the conference was not related to a particular country and dubbed it “peace and security conference in the Middle East.” Nonetheless, a small number of countries supported the US stance. Apart from the US delegation headed by a Vice President, the highest level delegates were the Israeli Prime Minister and the British Foreign Secretary.

Of course, the British Foreign Secretary announced that his presence at the meeting was only for the purpose of examining the issue of Yemen. He left Warsaw immediately after the conference ended. The German and French foreign ministers, the two major European countries, and Ms Federica Mogherini, EU foreign policy chief, also did not attend the meeting and dispatched lower-level officials. Countries like Russia, China and Turkey also did not send any delegate to Warsaw.

Among the Arab countries, the most prominent delegate at the Warsaw confab was the Foreign Minister of Oman, and even the Saudi Foreign Minister did not attend. So this meeting was not held at a high level contrary to the expectation and publicity of the Americans. There was also no final statement and only Poland as the host country and the United States, as the initiator of the meeting issued a statement in which there was no mention of Iran.

Of course, the Americans tried to portray Iran as the cause of insecurity in the region and the world in the topics they presented in their speeches. But eventually the Warsaw conference, in the words of most of the world mass media, was a major setback for the US diplomatic machine.

Meantime, it should not be forgotten that this meeting had its outputs as well. For instance, since 1991, for the first time, the leaders of Israel and Arab countries attended a conference together and took photographs. The Warsaw conference was also a platform for Trump’s deputy Mike Pence to voice strong criticisms of Iran and some other countries, which provided Israel with an opportunity to take advantage of the event.

There are perhaps a few points about Mike Pence’s remarks; first, he urged Europe to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Agreement (also known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action). European authorities reacted immediately. The French and German foreign ministers published a joint article in one of the German newspapers reiterating that they will support the JCPOA. The French foreign minister also said that his country does not get orders from anyone and will continue to support the JCPOA.

These all indicate that the gap that existed between the United States and Europe has deepened. Some media outlets, when Trump announced Washington’s withdrawal from the Iran Nuclear Agreement, reported that the US president had asked European authorities to stay in JCPOA. But the recent remarks made by Mike Pence put an end to such speculations. No matter if these reports were authentic or not, the US-induced that American authorities did not voice much protest to continued European cooperation with Iran over JCPOA, but the recent events between Brussels and Washington show that these differences are deeper than the past.

Meanwhile, after Iran continued its steadfastness and did not pull out of the JCPOA and the sanctions did not meet the expected results of the White House, the US diplomatic pressure on Europe to withdraw from the JCPOA is escalating, so that Iran will be forced to continue the nuclear deal without the United States and Europe, or withdraw from the JCPOA in a reciprocal action. In this case, the Americans will have an excuse to restore the Security Council sanctions against Iran and take things back to the pre-JCPOA situation by raising allegations that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon.

Whether the Europeans will resist these pressures or not will be decided with the lapse of time, but for now, the European official position indicates that they will not give in to this request of Washington.

On the other hand, Pence tried to accuse Iran of creating a new holocaust, and efforts were made to tarnish Iran’s image internationally. Another message of Trump’s deputy was that Barack Obama administration did not fulfil its duty during Iran’s election protests in 2009 and that if another similar incident occurs, Washington will support the opposition against the Iranian government.

But despite these anti-Iranian efforts, the United States did not achieve what it had imagined will achieve out of the Warsaw conference, and as it was mentioned, it was a failure for Washington’s foreign policy.