The longer the war in Iran churns on, the more hot-tempered and unhinged President Trump becomes. On Tuesday, Trump was at it again, lambasting Washington’s European allies on Truth Social for sitting on their hands and refusing to lift a finger to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the Persian Gulf chokepoint through which around 20 per cent of the world’s crude oil passes. Calling out the United Kingdom specifically, Trump went on to scold the allies much as a parent would tell a lazy 28 year-old to get out of the house. ‘You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us,’ Trump wrote. The president pressed the issue during a short interview with his favourite tabloid: ‘let the countries that are using the strait, let them go and open it.’
The war in Iran has forced Europe to grow a spine
In normal times, European leaders would scramble like headless chickens, dial each other up in a full-blown panic and brainstorm about how to climb the American commander-in-chief down from the ledge. When Trump barks, Europe usually answers the call to mollify him. Recall that last year, Keir Starmer and Italian premier Giorgia Meloni were instrumental in bringing Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy back into a functional relationship. Last summer, amidst a blow-up between Trump and Nato over defence spending, the organisation’s secretary general, Mark Rutte, found a way to grease the skids via a substantial increase in spending over the next decade. The announcement was geared toward giving Trump a win and saving the annual Nato summit from disaster.
The war in Iran, however, has forced Europe to grow a spine. European leaders are no longer interested in dropping to their knees and grovelling to stay on Trump’s good side. Even Starmer, whose wimpishness is the stuff of Saturday Night Live legend, is increasingly perturbed by Trump’s decision-making, the lack of consultation and the White House’s incessant demands for London to become more involved militarily. The decision to wage a preventative war on Iran, it seems, is perceived as so outlandish, ill thought out and stupid that even Washington’s traditional lackeys are staying away from it.
The evidence for the above conclusion is stark and growing by the day. On Monday, Spain, a country Trump has had longstanding grievances with over everything from trade to defence spending, not only shut its airspace for US military aircraft participating in the war but also prohibited the US from using jointly operated bases on Spanish territory for any activity connected to the conflict. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, whose approval ratings dipped earlier in the year, has since transitioned into one Europe’s leading statesmen and the chief antagonist to Trump’s America First policies. Sánchez may strongly oppose Trump’s Iran policy, but the war itself and Madrid’s reaction to it has nevertheless elevated his political stature.
France, too, is becoming more emboldened. Trump’s love-hate relationship with French President Emmanuel Macron is currently in the hate phase. Trump himself blamed Paris for refusing to allow US military planes carrying weapons to fly through French airspace, although there was no independent French confirmation on the matter. However, French sources have confirmed that Israeli aircraft with US weapons were denied access rights. To the Americans, the move is likely a distinction without a difference and is yet another demonstration of Europe’s ungrateful attitude. To the French, it’s a point of principle; although Macron has no love for Iran, he called the US and Israeli-initiated war ‘outside of international law,’ which is a polite way of labelling it an illegal act of aggression.
Italy, one of the more Trump-friendly states in Europe, isn’t exactly thrilled with the conflict either. This week, the Italians didn’t allow the US military to land aircraft at the Sigonella naval base in Sicily. Although the Italian government chalked this up to a bureaucratic slip-up – the Trump administration, Rome argued, needed permission from Italian lawmakers to land the plane per established protocols but put in the request too late – it doesn’t take a political genius to recognise that the war in Iran is incredibly unpopular amongst the Italian public. Meloni, who like Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte is often referred to as a Trump whisperer of sorts, is now feeling the negative political aftershocks produced by her close relationship with a president that most Italians despise.
Even Poland, the most pro-US state in the European Union, is turning down US requests. Asked by the Trump administration to donate air defence systems to the Middle East, Warsaw shrugged it off. ‘Our Patriot batteries and their armaments are used to protect Polish airspace and Nato’s eastern flank,’ Polish defence minister Wladyslaw Kosiniak-Kamysz wrote on X. ‘Nothing is changing in this regard, and we have no plans to move them anywhere!’
As he typically does, Trump will self-servingly simplify all of this opposition to European passivity and entitlement. On the issue of defence spending, he’s right. But on the subject of Iran, he’s dead wrong. Bluntly put, Europe hates the war, hates how Trump is prosecuting it and wants nothing to do with it.
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