“Iranians and Americans need to return to sit at the same negotiating table, without intermediaries. We would like the nuclear negotiations to resume in Rome, as has already happened twice.” In the evening we met Antonio Tajani at the Foreign Ministry. He had on his face the signs of a “long, very long Sunday”, which began at dawn with the phone call from Ambassador Francesco Genuardi, his Head of Cabinet, who informed him of the US attack on Iran. The Foreign Minister was in Gubbio for the closing of the three-day Forza Italia training Academy. Since then a long series of phone calls with ambassadors and advisors began, as well as meetings starting with the government meeting at 10 a.m. with Prime Minister Meloni, Ministers Salvini, Crosetto, Piantedosi, Undersecretaries Mantovano and Fazzolari and the intelligence services, until the one at the Foreign Ministry’s Crisis Unit, in connection with about twenty ambassadors from the region in which 50 thousand Italians, 20 thousand of whom are in Israel, feel in danger.
In the Foreign Ministry’s Sala della Vittoria, next to the winged bronze statue portraying victory, Minister Tajani spoke of peace and diplomatic mediation in the most difficult moment: “I am not a soothsayer. Anything can happen, but the Americans say there will be no more raids and I have to trust them. I spoke with US Secretary of State Rubio to tell him that direct talks need to be resumed and I tried to reach the Iranian Foreign Minister, Abbas Araghchi, who was flying to Moscow, to tell him the same thing. We are working to prevent an escalation of the conflict. It is no coincidence that we left our embassy in Tehran open. We are sparing no effort to convince Iran not to take reckless actions, such as attacking US embassies. Our hope lies in diplomacy”.
Minister Tajani said that, once informed of the US attack, he immediately called the ambassador in Tehran, Paola Amadei. “Fortunately, she told me that we had not suffered any damage and I calmed down. The priority, at this moment, is the Italians we are helping to leave the Iranian capital – less than a hundred people – along the “green road” we have opened towards Baku, Azerbaijan. As well as those who are fleeing from Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, a convoy of 122 of our compatriots, joined by two Ecuadorian diplomats, who are crossing the Egyptian border at Taba to board a charter flight in Sharm El Sheik that we organized for a fee, because it is not an evacuation.”
But was Italy involved in any way in the attack on nuclear sites in Iran? Did the Americans ask to use bases on our territory? Minister Tajani replied bluntly: “No, they did not.” He also confirmed that Italy was not informed in advance of Donald Trump’s decision, as was the case also for the UK and France. No one is more pro-European than Minister Tajani, former President of the European Parliament, and yet he threw up his hands and shook his head when we asked him about Europe, which is unable to make its voice heard. “As long as individual States speak and there is no common foreign and defence policy, Europe will not be able to have an impact on the international scene. These are discussions we have always had and other crises have also shown that a qualitative leap forward is needed, to count more in the world and take action not for our own individual interests but for a collective European interest, as Prime Minister Meloni did with President Trump on tariffs”.
What about the next moves? “Tomorrow (today, ed.) I will be in Brussels for the meeting of EU Foreign Ministers and we will talk about Iran, Gaza, Ukraine. On Wednesday I will take part in the NATO Summit in The Hague where we will again discuss to find a common policy line. We need to push for a ceasefire and in Gaza we were close to reach it. President Herzog told me that they were waiting for Hamas’s response, which had to release all hostages. But the USA is the only one that can convince Netanyahu to stop and Hamas cannot maintain its leadership in Palestine.”
The concerns, including the economic ones, for the widening of the Middle Eastern conflict regard above all Iran’s threat to close the Strait of Hormuz, which is very important for maritime traffic. Minister Tajani said: “According to our assessment, it would not be profitable for Iran to close the Strait of Hormuz; it would even be self-destructive. Even for China the damage would be huge and, over and above the political positions of China which condemned the US attack, it does not seem to me that there is a will to intervene. We obviously evaluate all options. The risk is there and at this moment anything can happen, but we must all work for de-escalation.”
