After Iran’s warning, Europe fails to unite on war launched by US, Israel 

Athens, Greece – Iran has warned European leaders against joining the United States and Israel’s war that has destabilised the Middle East and upended economies around the world.

While countries in Europe have found common ground in condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes on nonbelligerents in the Gulf, their positions have been confused and incoherent in reaction to the US-Israeli action that caused them.

The fact that Iran is a close ally of Russia, against whose war in Ukraine almost all members of the European Union are united in condemning and containing, and that a Russian antenna was reportedly found on Sunday to have been used in a drone that struck Cyprus, an EU member, has not been enough to rally Europeans against Iran as effectively as they have rallied against Russia.

There are two extremes at play. Spain has evicted US military aircraft from its bases, leading to a sharp rebuke from US President Donald Trump, who on Tuesday threatened to “cut off all trade” with Madrid. Meanwhile, Germany has decided to welcome US goals.

In between the two, the United Kingdom has allowed its military base at Akrotiri on Cyprus to be used by US aircraft for purely defensive purposes.

“The mullah regime is a terrorist regime responsible for decades of oppression of the Iranian people,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Sunday, two days before he met with Trump at the White House. “We share the interest of the United States and Israel in seeing an end to this regime’s terror and its dangerous nuclear and ballistic armament.”

Germany’s position now breaks its alignment with the other members of the EU triad, the UK and France. The three countries had backed negotiations with Tehran even after Trump unilaterally revoked the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, former US President Barack Obama’s signature diplomatic achievement, which lifted sanctions on Iran in return for monitoring of its nuclear programme.

Spain’s position is one of principle, said Jose-Ignacio Torreblanca, a distinguished policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, a think tank.

“The Spanish government has been consistently calling for the respect of international law both in Ukraine and Gaza, now in Iran,” Torreblanca told Al Jazeera, referring to Russia’s war in Ukraine, Israeli disregard for humanitarian law in Gaza and the strikes on Iran that are unsanctioned by the United Nations Security Council.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro “Sanchez has clearly said that this military operation is not covered by international law,” Torreblanca said, pointing out that while British Prime Minister Keir Starmer did not initially authorise the US to use a military base on Diego Garcia, an island in the Indian Ocean, but is now backing the strikes, “Spain is keeping consistency.”

Diego Garcia, home to a joint UK-US military base, is one of dozens of islands that make up the Chagos Archipelago. Starmer last month recognised that the Chagos islands should be sovereign Mauritian territory under international law.

Starmer said the use of Akrotiri was strictly defensive.

“The only way to stop the threat is to destroy the [Iranian] missiles at source, in their storage depots or the launchers which are used to fire missiles. The United States has requested permission to use British bases for that specific and limited defensive purpose,” Starmer said. “We have taken the decision to accept this request to prevent Iran from firing missiles across the region. … That is in accordance with international law. … We are not joining these strikes, but we will continue with our defensive actions in the region.”

Ukraine, invited in December 2024 to become a future EU member, has gone further, applauding the demise of Russia’s supplier of Shahed drones, about 44,700 of which it downed over its cities last year. It is also planning to assist efforts to shoot them down.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has again tried to build an EU consensus on the basis of negotiation. She called for containment, de-escalation, “a credible transition for Iran, the definite halt to both the nuclear and ballistic programmes, and an end to destabilising activities in the region”.

Europeans are beginning to rally around the idea of defensive action.

The Greek government on Monday dispatched four of its most sophisticated F-16 Viper fighter aircraft and two frigates to help defend Cyprus from possible further drone attacks.

The move is a bold one. One of the frigates, the Kimon, is the first of Greece’s new Belharra series of four, and was delivered from French shipyards only in December. It has not completed its personnel drills, a process estimated to take two years, and has not been officially commissioned by the Hellenic Navy.

Yet it is being sent into theatre with a green crew because it carries the state-of-the-art Sea Fire radar and targeting system, which is capable of scanning and identifying hostile targets over 25,000sq km (9,650sq miles), passing on strike coordinates to the Vipers.

On Tuesday, France announced it would join the fray, sending antimissile and antidrone systems to Cyprus. Britain followed, announcing it would send a warship to defend its base there.

The significance of these operations as the US withdraws from Europe and as the continent tries to live up to the task of defending itself could not be more potent. European preparations must include not only rearmament but also the legal options for mutual defence absent NATO, experts said.

“Cyprus is an EU member but not a NATO member, so they can’t invoke NATO’s Article 5 for collective defence,” said Elena Lazarou, director general of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, a think tank.

“What they can invoke is the European Union Treaty’s Article 42.7, which they haven’t done yet,” she told Al Jazeera. That article has come back into the spotlight after von der Leyen’s call to EU members to support progress towards an EU defence union.

“What we’re seeing in Europe at the moment is a lot of bilateral and multinodal defence alliances, but Article 42.7 needs to be made more specific in terms of the threats it addresses and the level of member states’ obligation to help if it is invoked,” she said.

“I believe the time has come to bring Europe’s mutual defence clause to life,” von der Leyen said at the Munich Security Conference last month. “Mutual defence is not optional for the EU. It is an obligation within our own treaty.”