Trump closes the doors to Iran and remains faithful to what he announced last January, when he asked the EU to intervene on Iran by imposing greater guarantees on compliance with the nuclear agreement (JCPOA) signed by Obama and Rouhani in 2013 and ratified in 2015. An agreement which was the result of more than 10 years of negotiations, since the French denounced the secret Iranian nuclear sites in 2002, and then came the warning from the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, for the non-compliance with the obligations international safeguards the following year, until the nuclear test of 2011.
After the useless pilgrimage of Macron and Merkel to the US, Trump's position has not changed, above all due to concerns about an Iranian government at the center of heavy accusations of corruption and repression. Thus it is not surprising that Saudi Arabia also applauds and fully shares Trump's strategy on the need to isolate Iran, which maintains strong territorial ambitions on the partition of Syria.
The geopolitical scenario remains the one outlined by the protectionist turn of the American administration, while the Russians try to save what can be saved by carrying on the negotiating tables with Iran and Turkey and China withdraws from the debate remaining focused on the North Korean game. The agreement on the dismantling of North Korea's nuclear potential is also linked to a bilateral China/USA match in which trade issues are at the center of a table opened on May 4th and also involve the thorny issue of intellectual property and the industrial technological plan " Made in China 2025”.
The European declarations that welcome the "greatest result of European diplomacy in recent times and the victory of multilateralism" are institutional phrases that leave the time they find and have little to do with the reality that European corporates and banks from tomorrow will have to face with respect to US sanctions, clearly extended also to those who will support the Iranian regime.
The European trade deal with Iran had seen a gold rush in 2016, following ratification, but the country's economic situation has not improved. On the contrary, it has worsened: the protests have spread throughout the country, creating widespread problems of control of the squares and inducing an increase in censorship on the media and social networks, until the definitive closure last January which overshadowed the internal civil uprisings.
Meanwhile, the emerging markets, already shaken by the strong dollar, risk a more massive flight of capital after the downgrading of Turkey, which caused the collapse of the currency and the prices of corporates, and the devaluation of Argentina, which forced the Macri government to ask for extraordinary aid to the International Monetary Fund.
The expected rebound of the emerging sector has so far failed: the performance of the MSCI Emerging Markets has been zero since the beginning of the year. Volatility on gold as on oil, in the latter case linked to forecasts of a drop in Iranian production, sees only opportunities on weaknesses and the price target remains linked to the medium-term objective of 85 dollars on Brent.
The framework of the financial markets will see a defensive attitude of the Asian countries in the face of the latest news, and therefore the markets that will suffer the most damage from this situation will be the European ones which, in the medium-long term, will see the ECB return to being a wait-and-see also in the light of the inflationary dynamics they do not place particular haste on decisions to exit Qe, but rather a long tail of maintenance on purchases of securities, albeit already reduced, as a desirable safeguard option.
