Brian Hook, the US special envoy on Iran, said: “[This is] the wrong message at the wrong time. Foreign aid from European taxpayers perpetuates the regime’s ability to neglect the needs of its people and stifles meaningful policy changes.”

He went onto explain that the Iranian people face very real economic pressures from their government’s corruption, mismanagement, and deep investment in terrorism and foreign conflicts, none of which are caused by US sanctions.

He: “The United States and the European Union should be working together instead to find lasting solutions that truly support Iran’s people and end the regime’s threats to regional and global stability.”

He advised that paying money to the mullahs will not improve the lives of the Iranian people, but will instead be used to fund Iran’s terrorism and the assassinations of political dissidents, some of which have occurred on European soil.

It should also be noted that earlier this year, European authorities foiled two terrorist attacks ordered by Iran; one in Albania and one in Paris. Both of these attacks targeted the Iranian Resistance.

In March, Albanian authorities arrested Regime agents posing as journalists outside of the main compound of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK), an Iranian opposition group that was forced to flee Iran and Iraq to avoid being targeted by the Iranian Regime.

In June, police in Belgium arrested an Iranian couple who were driving to the Free Iran gathering with explosives in their car. They had been posing as MEK members and planned to blow up the rally, where over 100,000 people had gathered, on the orders of an Iranian diplomat to Vienna, Assadollah Assadi, who also provided the bomb.

Assadi, who met the couple in Luxembourg to give them the bomb, was arrested in Germany, where he does not have diplomatic immunity, on his way back from the bomb delivery. He is awaiting extradition to Belgium. Another Iranian agent was arrested in Paris, but it is unclear what their role was.

The point is that by giving money to the terrorist mullahs, the EU has increased the chances of a terrorist attack on their shores, when they could have joined Trump in his firm stance against the Regime.