BRUSSELS, May 10 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Donald Trump's decision to pull out of the landmark Iran nuclear deal has catapulted the fate of European companies' business with Iran into limbo.
The nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), froze the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for a gradual normalization of Iran's economic and political relations with the international community, and the end of sanctions.
Riding roughshod over vehement opposition across the pond, Trump on Tuesday scrapped the deal and declared that Washington would soon re-impose "the highest level of economic sanctions" on Iran.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin elaborated in an announcement that "sanctions will be reimposed subject to certain 90-day and 180-day wind-down periods. At the conclusion of the wind-down periods, the applicable sanctions will come back into full effect. This includes actions under both our primary and secondary sanctions authorities."
Much to Europe's displeasure, foreign companies doing business with Iran are at the crosshairs of the U.S. sanctions against Iran.
In an explicit warning, U.S. ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell on Tuesday twitted that "German companies doing business in Iran should wind down operations immediately."
German car manufacturer Volkswagen, French energy giant Total, and European aircraft manufacturer Airbus, among others, have stroke up economic ties with their Iranian partners with contracts worth up to billions of dollars, since the nuclear deal was signed by Iran and six world powers in Vienna in 2015.
Volkswagen, in cooperation with the Iranian automotive company Mammut Khodro, began the sale of Volkswagen's Tiguan and Passat models imported from Germany since August 2017.
That marked the Volkswagen brand's return to Iran after more than 17 years.
Another likely victim is Total, which has resumed purchasing crude oil in Iran in 2016 and signed a 20-year contract with the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) in July 2017, for the development and production of phase 11 of the South Pars gas field.
The gas field, combined with the adjoining North Field in Qatar, is the world's largest natural gas field.
Under the agreement between Total and NIOC, Total operates the project with a 50.1 percent interest.
The project will have a production capacity of 2 billion cubic feet per day or 400,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. The produced gas will supply the Iranian domestic market starting in 2021, according to the website of Total.
Another company in hot water is Airbus, which in 2016 signed a contract with Iran Air for 100 aircraft, including 46 single-aisle and 54 wide-body jets.
Iran Air has taken delivery of its first new A330-200 in March 2017. However, the U.S. exit of the JCPOA and the looming sanctions cast a shadow over the fate of the remaining delivery.
Thus far, there's no official statement from these companies in response to U.S. withdrawal from the JCPOA.
But the European Union and governments of its member states have vowed to stick by the nuclear deal and shield European companies from U.S. sanctions.
Nonetheless, it remains unclear what the EU and its member states will do to deliver on their vows.
"Europe can seek to ease any resumed U.S. sanctions with other forms of economic and business inducements, but only at the cost of taking an unusually confrontational approach in transatlantic relations," wrote Jarrett Blanca, senior fellow in the Geoeconomics and Strategy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in an article posted on the thinktank's website.