BRUSSELS — President Donald Trump’s administration spent the past year dismissing Europeans as pathetic and irrelevant. Now, as he wages a war alongside Israel to force regime change in Iran, he wants Europe to cheer him on.
European leaders, who distanced themselves from the U.S. attack in its early hours, are ramping up their response to a crisis spreading beyond Iran. France, Italy and others are deploying military reinforcements to the region to defend their bases and partners. Britain has now allowed U.S. forces to use its bases to block Tehran’s retaliation. But the European moves so far fall short of the applause Trump is seeking for an assault without clear end that is violently reshaping the region.
The White House is not exactly trying to forge a coalition of the unwilling. Washington did not consult European allies before the attack and has not asked them to join in bombing Tehran. But the administration wants access to strategic European air bases and logistics hubs to facilitate its aerial barrage. And Trump is rebuking countries that don’t offer unflinching support, like Britain, or anyone who takes a forceful stand against the war, namely Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
“It’s taken three or four days for us to work out where we can land. … So we are very surprised,” Trump said. “This is not the age of Churchill.”
The fragility of the transatlantic relationship is on display as European leaders avoid criticizing an American president who is sensitive to it, while he strikes an Iranian leadership that they too want to see weakened. The continent’s leaders are wary, however, of a conflict unleashed by their most powerful ally that could bring untold ramifications to their doorstep — and of following America into yet another war in the Middle East, which has little, if any, upside with their voters.
So, while Berlin backs Trump and Madrid stands up to him, Europe’s top leaders have delivered a medley of barely consistent responses. Many are twisting themselves into knots to address the conflict while maintaining a veneer of neutrality, with Trump already unpopular across much of the continent.
It was only weeks ago that Trump threatened to seize Greenland from NATO ally Denmark.
With few exceptions, the balancing act leaves European leaders “half in, half out,” ignoring their purported values, and tilting to the side of a U.S. president they can hardly influence, said Nathalie Tocci, director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs.
The result, she said, is tacit endorsement of a campaign for regime change that threatens to bring more chaos to the region, where Europeans have a sizable military footprint and hundreds of thousands of citizens.
The war in Iran began “unbeknownst to the world” and was not a decision “shared by anyone,” Italian Defense Minister Guido Crosetto told lawmakers in Rome on Thursday. “Of course, it was well outside the rules of international law. We don’t need to say it.”
Crosetto, a member of the party led by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, one of Trump’s closest allies in Europe, appeared to be addressing criticism of the European response — and the apparent lack of U.S. warning to allies, which left him stuck in Dubai when the strikes started.
“No country” in Europe or elsewhere, he added, “can convince the U.S. and Israel to stop this war.”
European capitals were not asked to join the attack on Iran in advance, and they have not taken part in combat, said three senior European diplomats, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to share sensitive discussions.
Trump has praised one European leader, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who visited Washington this week after he declared there was little use “lecturing” about the illegality of war.
Back home, however, Merz faced European criticism for abandoning support of international law, which he has touted on Ukraine and Greenland, and for not defending Spain from Trump’s criticism in the Oval Office.
“Clueless tourist stranded in crisis zone” is how one German front page described Merz’s trip to Washington.
The optics contrast with European pledges to develop unity and independence from the United States on security matters. “Surely your sovereignty begins by speaking your mind,” Tocci said. She noted several European leaders were so careful not to criticize the U.S. attack that it seemed simpler for them — however absurd — to ignore it in their initial reactions.
Spain’s Sánchez — who has warned his European peers for months against projecting double standards or ignoring security threats from the bloc’s southern borders — has mounted the only vehement public opposition to Trump.
Still, the Europeans are not sitting this out, as the war hikes oil prices and risks spurring a new wave of refugees. French President Emmanuel Macron, deploying a surge in air defenses and warships to the Middle East, pledged to protect E.U. member Cyprus and Persian Gulf nations, which have come under fire from Iran’s retaliation. Macron also said the U.S. attack broke international law, and that he is trying to broker another ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, where Israeli strikes have displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The French military said Paris has allowed the U.S. to use a base in France for its aircraft, so long as it’s not used to “participate in any way” in U.S. strikes on Iran.
Even Spain, locked in a showdown with Washington for refusing access to Spanish bases, announced it was dispatching a frigate to help Cyprus and demonstrate “commitment to the defense of the European Union.”
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Trump was so furious with Spain that he threatened to “embargo” the country, although singling out Spain would be tricky, since the 27-nation European Union trades as a bloc.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose about-face allowed the U.S. to use British bases, is also under pressure from his Labour Party to disavow the war. He maintained that the decision is “limited.”
European bases are far closer to the conflict, including the Diego Garcia base in the Chagos Islands, which Britain controls, in the Indian Ocean. In a drawn-out conflict, those facilities would let the U.S. move jets, fuel or weaponry more quickly. Washington has used European bases in past Middle East offensives, including for rotating troops during the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A senior British official said the proximity of the bases to Iran would “enable U.S. forces to take out more missile sites and command-and-control units at a greater rate.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte praised Trump on Fox News and Newsmax in recent days, insisting that allies support the U.S. war on a “massive scale” — an assertion Spain has rejected. But Rutte seemed to succeed with a core element of his role these days: keeping Trump pleased. “Thank you to our great NATO Secretary General!” the president posted on social media.
The Trump administration has made clear it expects Europeans to help Washington, given America’s longtime defensive shield for the continent. Ukraine’s European backers also rely on U.S. weapons for the fight against Russia.
Despite uneasiness over a long war in the Middle East, European officials have their own misgivings with Iran, including over its ballistic missiles and ties to Russia, and they have heaped blame almost entirely on Tehran.
Yet the fallout could hit closer than in America. Some E.U. countries, such as Cyprus, are within missile range, as is Turkey, which is a NATO member.
For European politicians, joining a U.S. war will be unpopular after the stained legacies of the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, and the deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan. Following Israel into war will also be divisive in many European nations, with some European officials having accused Israel of genocide in Gaza.
As they deploy reinforcements to the region, officials cast this as a means to safeguard citizens and Europe’s energy needs.
Italy’s Meloni described Persian Gulf partners as “vital” to the country’s energy supply. Above all, she said, “there are tens of thousands of Italians in that area, and approximately 2,000 Italian soldiers whom we want to, and must, protect.”
Sánchez, meanwhile, urged Europe to remember the fallout of past Western interventions. “You cannot answer one illegality with another,” he said in a speech, “because that is how the great catastrophes of humanity begin.”
