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Budapest and Poland’s Wroclaw Reinforce Their River Banks Ahead of More Flooding in Central Europe 

An aerial view shows the high water level of the Oder River near the Opatowice weir in Wroclaw, southwest Poland, 16 September 2024. (EPA)
An aerial view shows the high water level of the Oder River near the Opatowice weir in Wroclaw, southwest Poland, 16 September 2024. (EPA)
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Budapest and Poland’s Wroclaw Reinforce Their River Banks Ahead of More Flooding in Central Europe 

An aerial view shows the high water level of the Oder River near the Opatowice weir in Wroclaw, southwest Poland, 16 September 2024. (EPA)
An aerial view shows the high water level of the Oder River near the Opatowice weir in Wroclaw, southwest Poland, 16 September 2024. (EPA)

Soldiers dropped sandbags from military helicopters to reinforce river embankments and evacuated residents as the worst flooding in years spread Tuesday to a broad swath of Central Europe, taking lives and destroying homes.

Heavy flooding has affected a large part of the region in recent days, including the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Austria. There have been at least 16 deaths reported in the flooding, which followed heavy rainfall across the region.

Other places are now bracing for the flood waves to hit them, including two central European gems: Budapest, the Hungarian capital on the Danube River, and Wroclaw, a city in southwestern Poland on the Oder River, its old town filled with architectural gems.

Hungary's government of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán deployed soldiers to reinforce barriers along the Danube, and thousands of volunteers assisted in filling sandbags in dozens of riverside settlements.

In Budapest, authorities closed the city’s lower quays, which are expected to be breached by rising waters later in the day. The lower half of the city’s iconic Margaret Island was also closed.

In Wroclaw, firefighters and soldiers spent the night using sandbags to reinforce river embankments. The city zoo, located along the Oder, appealed for volunteers to fill sandbags on Tuesday morning.

“We and our animals will be extremely grateful for your help,” the zoo said in its appeal.

The city said it expected the flood wave to peak there around Friday, though some had predicted that would happen sooner. Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk met with a crisis team early Tuesday and said there are contradictory forecasts from meteorologists.

Tusk's government has declared a state of natural disaster across the affected region of southern Poland.

To the south of Wroclaw, residents spent the night fighting to save Nysa, a town of 44,000 people, after the Nysa Klodzka River broke its banks the day before. The town mayor Kordian Kolbiarz said 2,000 “women, men, children, the elderly” came out to try to save their town from the rising waters, forming a human chain that passed sandbags to the river bank.

“We simply ... did everything we could,” Kolbiarz wrote on Facebook. “This chain of people fighting for our Nysa was incredible. Thank you. We fought for Nysa. Our home. Our families. Our future.”

In the Czech Republic, waters have been receding in the two hardest-hit, northeast regions. The government approved the deployment of 2,000 troops to help with clean-up efforts. The damage is expected to reach billions of euros.

The Czech government also scrambled to help local authorities organize regional elections on Friday and Saturday as several schools and other buildings serving as polling stations have been badly damaged. However, a planned evacuation of some 1,000 in the town of Veseli nad Luznici could be postponed as the waters had not reached critical levels so far.

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Iran Awaits Trump's Policy on its Nuclear Program

This handout picture provided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows the organization chief Mohammad Eslami (R) during a ceremony to unveil a domestically-made high power radio frequency generator (AEOI)
This handout picture provided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows the organization chief Mohammad Eslami (R) during a ceremony to unveil a domestically-made high power radio frequency generator (AEOI)
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Iran Awaits Trump's Policy on its Nuclear Program

This handout picture provided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows the organization chief Mohammad Eslami (R) during a ceremony to unveil a domestically-made high power radio frequency generator (AEOI)
This handout picture provided by the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran shows the organization chief Mohammad Eslami (R) during a ceremony to unveil a domestically-made high power radio frequency generator (AEOI)

One of the many complex foreign policy problems that Donald Trump will inherit when he takes office in just over two weeks is Iran, according to the US Council on Foreign Relations.

Iran is on the threshold of becoming a nuclear power, its robust ballistic missile program continues to progress, and it sees the United States as the main obstacle to its domination of the Middle East, the Council wrote in an analysis.

“How will Trump respond,” it then asked, “That question is easy to answer because Trump has been consistent about his plans. He will return to his first administration’s policy of “maximum pressure.”

That effort sought to turn the economic screws on Iran by expanding US sanctions against it and ratcheting up the enforcement of sanctions already in place.

“The goal was not regime change but rather forcing Tehran to limit its nuclear and ballistic missile programs and curb support for the regional militias that made up the so-called axis of resistance,” the Council said.

It added that although maximum pressure squeezed the Iranian economy, it failed to force Tehran to the bargaining table.

The Council said even as its economy faltered and its foreign reserves dwindled, Iran continued its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, expanded its support for its regional proxies, and even launched a missile attack against a US base in Iraq in 2020.

“Would the maximum pressure campaign have paid off had the Biden administration kept it in place? Trump thinks so,” it wrote.

The Council said evidence on that score is mixed.

“Israel’s wars against Hamas and Hezbollah, and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, have weakened Iran’s position in the region. Its proxies are fewer and weaker than just six months ago.”

Beyond that, Israel’s October retaliatory air strikes destroyed much of Iran’s air defenses, leaving it open to further military attacks.

Nuclear Program

According to the Council, that vulnerability, coupled with Iran’s economic woes and domestic unrest, may be why Iran’s foreign minister said that Iran is looking to resume nuclear talks.

By the same token, however, a maximum pressure strategy takes time to work.

“That could be in short supply, at least when it comes to Iran’s nuclear program,” according to the Council.

It said Iran intensified its uranium-enrichment efforts after Trump terminated the 2015 nuclear deal that the Obama administration negotiated.

By most estimates, it added, Iran can now build a small number of nuclear weapons within weeks of deciding to cross the nuclear threshold.

The Council on Foreign Relations also noted that other great powers will also undermine the maximum pressure policy.

“China and Russia have both skirted or ignored existing US and multilateral sanctions on Iran. They are unlikely to comply with them now unless they get something significant from the United States in return,” it said.

The Council also showed that Trump may be unwilling or unable to provide that enticement. “If Tehran believes that Beijing and Moscow have its back, resistance becomes a more feasible strategy. Tehran could even use negotiations as a way to buy time to address its vulnerabilities,” it added.

Negotiations in Good Faith

Even if Iran enters into negotiations in good faith, Trump’s efforts could stumble over deciding what deal is good enough, the Council wrote.

It said the ideological diversity of his team, composed as it is of hardliners and American Firsters, makes it likely they will argue over what Tehran needs to concede to make a deal worthwhile. That internal division could torpedo the effort to get a deal.

“All of this raises the question of what happens if talks either do not begin or, perhaps more likely, go nowhere once they do,” the Council noted.

It said calls for the US to attack Iran’s nuclear sites are likely to mount if the maximum pressure campaign does not produce quick results. “Trump will also likely hear calls that he should encourage Israel to attack Iran, though Israel lacks the capability to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities.”

According to the Council, Tehran will be assessing Trump’s willingness to use military force, as well as Israel’s military capabilities, as it thinks about negotiations.

It said Iranian leaders know he ordered the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in 2020, spoke on the campaign trail about blowing Iran “to smithereens” and has said that Israel should hit Iran’s nuclear sites.

But they also know that he campaigned against America’s “forever wars” in the Middle East while boasting, wrongly, that he is “the only president in seventy-two years” that “had no wars.”

According to the Council, resorting to military force, whether with direct US action or by encouraging Israel to attack, would be a major roll of the dice.

“It might succeed beyond its planners’ wildest dreams and usher in a new, more peaceful era in the Middle East,” it said.

Or, like the invasion of Iraq, it may open a Pandora’s Box of problems that will haunt the region and the United States for years to come, the Council showed.

But letting Iran continue its nuclear and ballistic missile programs while it rebuilds its axis of resistance has costs of its own, it noted.

Therefore, the Council said some hope that a return to the maximum pressure strategy works.