This time Europe got its act together.

• Author: Vernet, Daniel
• Position: European Diplomacy

Who exactly was it that sounded the alarm about nuclear subterfuge threat in Iran and the possibility that Tehran might be trying to build nuclear weapons? It remains a slightly open question. France's President Jacques Chirac or Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin? Or was it Joschka Fischer, Germany's top diplomat at the time? What is known is that reactions crystallized in Europe, in May 2003, when Chirac sounded the alarm at an international conference on drugs in Paris.

Washington had already been alerted to the problem thanks to information passed along by Iranian dissidents (initially the People's Mujahedin) about centrifuges set up at secret sites in Iran and not reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency. But the Bush administration had its hands full with Iraq and European officials were worried that Washington was not paying enough attention to the Iranian dossier. So they decided that it was time for Europe to take on the problem. To put it bluntly, some European diplomats explain privately, they felt compelled to take action fast because they were worried about what Washington might do otherwise. They feared the Bush administration might suddenly 'wake up' to the problem and react militarily with an intervention that most Europeans saw as disastrous.

Now negotiations with the Iranians have gone on for three years, marked by repeated setbacks and some temporary breakthroughs. But at the end of 2006, the talks appear to have reached a dead end: The Iranians refuse to comply with the international community's demand that they suspend uranium enrichment in their country.

Have the Europeans spent three years working on the issue for nothing? If that proves to be the case, it would be a setback for them, not only on the substance but also because their Iranian initiative was an attempt to put into practice the common defense and security policy that they have been striving to set up for years. It also represents an attempt to succeed geopolitically with the soft power approach that the Europeans are quick to promote as an alternative to the hard power that Washington prides itself on wielding.

The so-called "E-3" approach--bringing together France, Germany and Great Britain as a team--is an innovation in European collective policy-making. At first glance, it seems to be a natural format, bringing together the three countries that are, economically and/or diplomatically, the three most influential member states of the European Union. But this E-3 trio was not the "troika" that Mr. Chirac originally had...