“Spain’s position is the same as in Ukraine or Gaza,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared in his latest public broadside against the US-Israeli attack on Iran. “No to the breakdown of international law that protects us all. No to resolving conflicts with bombs. No to war.”
Sanchez remains the most strident European leader in his opposition, but he is hardly alone. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer limited Washington’s use of British military bases; European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen urged all sides to “de-escalate”; and French President Emmanuel Macron joined Sanchez in calling the attacks illegal – a rather peculiar interpretation of international law that disregards the facts.
The United States and Israel did not initiate a war last Saturday. Instead, they responded forcefully to the war Tehran has waged against Israel, the United States and the wider West for more than 40 years.
Europe’s skittishness over Iran contrasts sharply with its robust response to Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine – an invasion that served as a wake-up call for European leaders about Vladimir Putin’s imperial ambitions after years in which they sought warmer relations with the Russian strongman.
One might have hoped it would also instil in Europe a broader strategic realism beyond the specific case of Russia: that hostile rogue regimes pose dangers even when Europe itself is not the immediate target; that an enemy’s threats should be taken seriously rather than fatefully dismissed as bluster – as Putin’s were until the tanks rolled into Ukraine; and that neither prudence nor international law requires democracies to sit back and wait for those threats to be carried out before acting. Not every conflict can be settled around the negotiating table. Some threats are deterred only by force – and some can be removed only by it.
Yet Iran has hardly been a distant or theoretical danger. Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Tehran has carried out more than 100 plots of “assassination, abduction, intimidation and surveillance” in Europe, targeting not only Iranian dissidents and Israeli officials but also European and UK citizens.
And still Europe seems to draw no comparable lesson about the longstanding and very real threat Tehran poses to the continent, let alone to Israel and the region – even as Iran now attacks European assets with drones in hopes of complicating the US-Israeli campaign.
Rather than support the efforts of their allies that could end such attacks for good, European leaders are urging an end to military action and a return to negotiations.
They are wrong for reasons of both national security and geopolitical strategy, and they would be wise to change course. Whether or not they recognise how just and strategically necessary this war is, their open opposition is a serious strategic error. It will not change the outcome. Instead, it will further alienate those in Washington, especially at this moment in the Trump administration and among Congressional Republicans, who already question Europe’s reliability as an ally and the wisdom of continuing to underwrite the continent’s security.
The record is clear. The Islamic Republic is aggressive, expansionist and ideologically driven, and it has long sought to export its Islamic revolution across the region and beyond. Long the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran has worked both directly and through Hezbollah, Hamas and other terrorist proxies in its “axis of resistance” to destroy Israel, undermine Arab-Israeli peace, destabilise regional governments and attack Western interests in the Middle East, across Europe and even south of America’s border. To conduct operations in Europe, it has provided funding and support to criminal networks.
Iran’s leaders have long chanted “Death to America”, “Death to Israel”, “Death to England”, in their parliament, at public rallies and elsewhere. Through the many terrorist attacks they have planned or sponsored, they have the blood of thousands of Americans, Israelis and others on their hands.
More broadly, with its nuclear pursuits and increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles, the regime has long raised the prospect of a global nightmare: the world’s most dangerous weapons in the hands of the world’s most aggressive state sponsor of terrorism. A quarter-century of US and European negotiations has not convinced the regime to abandon either its goals or the nuclear weapons intended to achieve them.
After Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 Israelis on October 7, 2023, Israel severely weakened Hamas, decapitated Hezbollah’s leadership and, with the help of the United States, crippled Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Now, with their joint attack, Washington and Jerusalem hope to finish the job.
The benefits for the region, Europe and the West are obvious. Tehran’s demise would deprive Hezbollah, Hamas and other groups of their most important source of support, severely reducing their lethality. It would deny Russia a key source of drones and the technical assistance to manufacture them, improving Kyiv’s prospects and thereby curbing Moscow’s expansionist ambitions in Europe. It would also weaken Russia and China by costing them an increasingly close ally. And it would raise hopes for human rights in Iran.
All of this should appeal to those in Europe and elsewhere who say they seek a more peaceful and humane world.
Yet even if European leaders fail to grasp the Iranian threat clearly, they appear determined to aggravate Washington with their words and actions – at a time when transatlantic relations are already strained.
Yes, President Trump can be difficult. But Europe and the United States need each other – and Europe, in truth, needs America rather more than the other way around, especially in an era in which democracy is retreating and authoritarianism is advancing around the world.
A wiser Europe would recognise the benefits it stands to gain – and stop picking unnecessary fights with Washington over a campaign it cannot possibly influence and that ultimately advances its own security.
Lawrence J. Haas, a former Communications Director for Vice President Al Gore, is a senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the author of, among other books, Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World
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