Europe is behaving as though the US-Israeli campaign against the Islamic Republic were a distant quarrel of little strategic interest beyond energy prices – even as its equivocation risks fraying the transatlantic alliance. This is fundamentally wrong. It is, in substance and in consequence, Europe’s war as well.
From missiles now capable of reaching Paris, Berlin and presumably also London to Iranian state terror plots on the continent and the UK, the Islamic Republic is a clear and present danger to Europe itself.
For decades, the settled view has been that the regime, while Islamist, is ultimately a rational actor susceptible to diplomacy and restraint. But, faced with overwhelming American and Israeli military force and the systematic degradation of its military-industrial infrastructure, Iran has chosen escalation over negotiation. A conventionally rational regime would have sought to preserve its assets, bide its time and await a more favourable geopolitical climate.
It is therefore misleading to suggest, as French President Emmanuel Macron has done, that the US and Israel have embarked on this campaign simply because they don’t “like” this regime. They have acted because Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes pose an existential threat to Israel and a grave national security threat to the US and its other allies in the region and ultimately also to Europe. Even if one were prepared to gamble that Iran would never turn its potentially nuclear-tipped missiles on Europe – a reckless wager – the threat to Israel alone ought to carry weight on a continent that still professes a commitment to the security of the Jewish state in the shadow of its own history. That commitment cannot mean neutrality, or even outright hostility, when that security is plainly imperilled by an Islamist regime dedicated to Israel’s destruction.
Europe has, moreover, a distinct interest it is curiously overlooking. Iran is a principal military partner of Russia, supplying drones and other weapons used against Ukraine. It is also a conduit of cheap energy to China, helping sustain a broader axis of revisionist, anti-Western powers. Weakening Iran weakens Russia’s war effort and is therefore an act in defence of European security. Just ask Ukrainian President Zelensky, who has described the regime as “accomplices of Russia”.
The practical requests made of Europe have, in any case, been modest. Neither Washington nor Jerusalem has demanded large-scale European military engagement. The issues at stake are the use of bases, overflight rights, and cooperation in securing a maritime route that is, if anything, more vital to Europe than to either the US or Israel.
Britain’s initial refusal to grant the US access to Diego Garcia, coupled with France’s denial of even something as innocuous as overflight rights to supply Israel with weapons, is particularly ill-advised. Routine assistance that would have likely passed unnoticed has been needlessly elevated into a very public diplomatic row.
Some European leaders have chosen to accompany this posture with rhetorical broadsides against the US – partly driven by domestic political considerations, partly perhaps in reaction to Donald Trump’s own confrontational style toward Europe.
But whatever one may think of some of the US president’s policies or rhetoric, responsible European defence policy cannot be driven by such emotional reactions. European security remains underwritten, for the foreseeable future, by US power. To jeopardise the transatlantic relationship is not strategic autonomy but strategic folly.
The result is a posture that is wrong on multiple fronts. It underestimates the ideological nature and scale of the Iranian threat. It ignores the ways in which Tehran’s partnership with Russia intersects with Europe’s most pressing security challenge – Putin’s war against Ukraine. And it risks eroding the alliance on which European defence ultimately depends.
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