For Europe, it’s like choosing a poison: U.S. President Donald Trump or Iran?

As Tehran inches ever closer to developing nuclear weapons, pressure is building on the European Union to choose a side in a standoff where it has done its utmost to remain on the sidelines.

Europe has taken pains to keep alive the West’s 2015 nuclear deal with Iran after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the accord in May of last year.

Trump’s Republican Party had opposed the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), from the outset. He argued the agreement wouldn’t prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in the long term.

But within the EU, the JCPOA represented the defining moment of the bloc’s diplomacy — a singular achievement the region’s leaders believed confirmed the EU’s ability to act in unison on foreign policy.

“The situation has now escalated to such an extent that we’re well past the point where the Europeans could be effective" — Sascha Lohmann, German analyst

After Washington reimposed sanctions on Tehran, Europe encouraged its own companies to continue to trade with the country and tried to establish a new international payment system to allow them to avoid running afoul of U.S. law.

For months, European leaders tried to paper over the problems with regular rhetorical reassurances that they remained committed to the agreement, even as it crumbled.

A series of recent breaches of the terms of the JCPOA by Iran — including a move to enrich uranium beyond the limits it stipulates — is forcing European leaders to rethink their approach.

In addition to the EU, the key players include Germany, France and the U.K., all of which are signatories to the accord. Officials close to the deliberations say that so far about the only thing the group can agree on is that they need to do something. The question is what.

Under the agreement, the EU could trigger a dispute resolution clause, a process that could lead Europe to reimpose sanctions on Iran, much as the U.S. has done.

Yet Europe appears to fear that outcome more than Tehran. Since Iranian President Hassan Rouhani declared in July that his country would enrich uranium “to any level we need,” reaction on the Continent has been marked by forceful rhetoric followed by no action.

After the United Nations’ atomic agency reported last week, for example, that Iran was enriching uranium at a once-secret underground site that Western intelligence believes was built to develop nuclear weapons, European foreign ministers released a statement saying they were “extremely concerned.”

They took no further steps.

Some observers say it’s already too late for Europe to act.

“The situation has now escalated to such an extent that we’re well past the point where the Europeans could be effective,” said Sascha Lohmann, an analyst with the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a think tank that advises the government. “They should have taken action a long time ago.”

Europe’s bystander role has once again been on full display this week.

In other words, by responding weakly to earlier Iranian violations of the deal and other provocations — such as Iran’s suspected attacks on international tanker traffic in the Persian Gulf and bombing of a refinery in Saudi Arabia — Europe has lost any diplomatic leverage it may have had.

A year after the U.S.’s so-called “maximum pressure” sanctions campaign took effect, it has become clear — especially to Iran’s leadership — that Europe is powerless to cushion the impact and, therefore, has little to offer.

Looking the other way

Perhaps the clearest evidence of that is that Europe’s largest companies ignored the advice of their own governments and instead adhered to Washington’s sanctions regime, a tacit acknowledgment that the companies are regulated out of the U.S.

Another sign of Europe’s dwindling influence came during the United Nations’ annual leaders’ meetings in September. After signaling to French President Emmanuel Macron that he would speak to Trump via telephone from his hotel (Macron had a secure phone line installed at Rouhani’s hotel for the call), Rouhani refused at the last minute, humiliating the French leader, who had tried for weeks to bring the two sides together.

Europe’s bystander role has once again been on full display this week.

As thousands of Iranians took to the streets in cities across the country in recent days, the silence from Europe’s major capitals has been deafening.

While U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other American leaders have voiced support for the popular protests, leading European politicians have been mute.

The European Commission put out statements this week bemoaning the “disregard for fundamental freedoms” in Belarus, but it stayed quiet on Iran, despite reports from Amnesty International and other groups that Iranian authorities have killed dozens of protesters.

But then, Europe has a long history of looking the other way on Iran’s abuses of fundamental human rights. Neither the Iranian regime’s public hangings of gays and other undesirables at home, nor its support for terrorist organizations abroad has prompted Europe to close the door.

Indeed, senior European officials such as EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini have at times sounded more critical of the Trump administration than of Iran’s brutal regime.

That defiance is due in part to economics. Leading European powers, especially France and Germany, have long seen oil-rich Iran, a country of more than 80 million people, as an attractive trading partner with untapped potential and were loath to leave in the first place.

European diplomats say privately that they cling to the JCPOA for fear that acknowledging the collapse of the deal and reimposing sanctions would only further provoke Iran.

The Trump effect

Another reason for Europe’s refusal to get tough on Iran might be to simply avoid acknowledging that Trump — a man many of the region’s leaders have difficulty disguising their dislike for — wasn’t as wrong on Iran as they thought.

European officials have long argued that the Trump administration’s strategy of ratcheting up sanctions pressure risked bolstering support for the Islamic regime as Iranians rallied around their leaders to oppose the “Great Satan.”

The latest outbreak of protests, which has been so severe that Iran’s leaders disconnected their citizens’ access to the internet, would appear to discount that theory.

The immediate trigger of the protests, in which more than 100 people have reportedly died, was the government’s decision to end fuel subsidies. But it’s difficult to argue that the U.S. sanctions, which have put Iran’s economy under severe strain, didn’t contribute to the decision.

“The economic crisis is an onramp to a larger discussion about politics in Iran,” said Behnam Ben Taleblu, an analyst with the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a U.S.-based foreign policy think tank. “This torpedoes the theory that foreign pressure begets national unity.”

One reason for the Europeans’ waiting game on Iran is that they’ve been hoping that next year’s presidential election in the U.S. and Iran’s election in 2021 might help improve the environment.

If the events of recent weeks are any indication, time has already run out.