European foreign ministers are Iran's Trump whisperers

Europe’s frantic diplomatic mission in Geneva may go down as one of its most arduous ventures on the world stage and also one of its most consequential. The foreign ministers of Britain, France and Germany must persuade a battered Iranian regime to kowtow to the US and Israel over its nuclear ambitions, or face likely annihilation.

- MICHAEL DAY

All three European powers would, of course, love to see the back of supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei's corrupt and brutal theocracy. But they rightly fear the regime's capacity to unleash death and destruction before it goes.

If Trump joins Israel in the war on Iran with US bunker-busting bombs on nuclear sites, and it succeeds in killing Khamenei, there will still be plenty of Iranian hardliners left who will be willing to fight to the death. Previous inhibitions will not apply. That could mean use of a dirty bomb in the West, or chaos unleashed in the Strait of Hormuz, through which 90 per cent of the Gulf's oil passes. For the world at large, the stakes are that high.

British foreign secretary David Lammy - after meeting his US counterpart, Marco Rubio, and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington on Thursday - said that the UK was "determined that Iran must never have a nuclear weapon". He thinks a window exists within the next two weeks to achieve a diplomatic solution, as Trump dithers over whether to attack the regime, as US neo-cons and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu are demanding or whether to heed the no-more-wars mantra of his Maga base.