Europe is still unable to define and defend its own strategic interests.
Dr Alain Gabon is Associate Professor of French Studies and chair of the Department of Foreign Languages & Literatures at Virginia Wesleyan University in Virginia Beach, USA.
Cross-posted from Middle East Eye
The US and Israel have started another myopic and dangerous regional war that is ultimately doomed to be counterproductive for all.
Unlike Israel, the US may be willing to settle for a significant and durable degradation of Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, and of Tehran’s allies, especially Hezbollah.
If they reach a point where they believe enough of those capabilities have been destroyed to neutralise any threat to Israel for at least the next several years, the Americans may settle for an “Ayatollah-lite” endgame with another theological regime.
But for Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the only potential beneficiary of the war, this is a much larger battle. The eradication of the antagonistic Iranian regime is meant to guarantee Israel’s regional hegemony.
The ultimate goal is not just the end of a hostile regime that has always represented an obstacle to Israel’s religious supremacist project. Well beyond creating a buffer zone around Israel, the aim is to territorially recreate the biblical “Promised Land”, also known as Greater Israel.
There is broad consensus among analysts, international relations experts, media and politicians across the spectrum that a naive and pliable US President Donald Trump was pushed into this conflict, duped and manipulated by Netanyahu into launching yet another Middle Eastern war.
Other observers have a different reading, arguing that the war is taking place on two different geopolitical chessboards: one regional (Israel’s campaign against Iran) and one global (the China-US hegemonic clash) – each with their own logic, temporality, objectives and priorities.
In that reading, Washington’s real target is not Iran, but China, as it aims to strip Beijing of yet another ally and major structural asset, after the collapse of Venezuela.
Balancing act
For Europe, this is another humiliation – one that further weakens and marginalises EU countries.
From the outset, they were poised to suffer from this joint attack in numerous ways, including direct retaliatory strikes from Iran on their own territory, energy inflation, threats to their economic prosperity and national security, risks of terrorism, and the potential for another destabilising wave of mass migration.
They quickly got sucked into the war against their will – yet they were not even informed of the forthcoming attack.
Clearly taken aback and afraid of Trump’s punishing reactions, they initially engaged in an embarrassed balancing act, with the usual vacuous calls for “de-escalation”, protecting the “safety of civilians”, and finding a “diplomatic solution”. They neither condemned nor endorsed the attack on Iran.
The initial statement from E3 leaders (France, Germany and the UK), shameful and cynical, turned reality on its head by squarely putting the blame on Iran and only Iran – the nation under attack – without a single word to condemn the aggressors, the US and Israel, or the legality of the war.
Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte appeared ecstatic about the attack. Seeming disconnected from reality, as Iranian missiles were already hitting Arab Gulf states, he claimed in a televised interview that the Israeli-American war was “making us all safer”, noting that the “many European leaders” he had spoken with were “all extremely glad with this action”.
The unelected yet all-powerful president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen; her vice president, Kaja Kallas; and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz apparently had nothing to say about international law or the culpability of the US and Israel in launching this war.
Instead, in Orwellian mode, European leaders blamed Iran’s “reckless and indiscriminate attacks” and its “destabilisation” of the region, and called on Tehran to immediately halt all strikes – deliberately oblivious to the fact that these were a purely defensive response to the Israeli-American aggression.
European leaders thus unequivocally denied Iran’s right to self-defence. This position should not be surprising, since the EU and Nato have long shared the goal of ending – or short of that, rendering weaponless and defenceless – an Iranian regime that they have always viewed as a threat to the regional order, and an existential menace to Israel.
In that respect, they were fully aligned with Israel and the US, which they count on to do their “dirty work”. Indeed, after a brief hesitation, France and Britain allowed the US to use their airspace and military bases as part of the campaign against Iran.
Passive resistance
Nonetheless, at least for the moment, one must also acknowledge a genuine – and so far unanimous – refusal by European states to be drawn further into this war, resisting Trump’s efforts to enlist their assistance in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, amid well-coordinated declarations that it is not their war. All of this points to a future agreement with the new Iranian regime.
But this belated, though welcome, European reassertion amounts to mere passive resistance: damage limitation and basic self-preservation, rather than firm opposition.
It also cannot conceal what has once again been shown in plain view to the whole world, especially the Global South: their dramatic loss of influence and status.
Europe has shown yet again that it remains unable – and unwilling – to act as a middle power capable of defending its own strategic interests. EU states can no longer hide their weakness, incompetence, cowardice and hypocrisy, particularly when it comes to their own professed moral and civilisational values, such as universal human rights.
This has caused further damage to their moral authority and credibility, an inevitable consequence when one openly (or more discreetly) rejoices at wars of choice, readily betrays one’s own alleged principles, and laments civilian casualties only when suffered by their own people or those of allied states – never the countless Iranian victims.
Even after the Gaza genocide, the EU has managed to double down on its unconditional support for the worst colonial rogue state on earth, Israel – at a time when it is ruled by religious supremacist fanatics.
While EU leaders like to lament the death of the postwar “international world order” (more accurately, the Washington Consensus), these are crocodile tears, given that they themselves are among the prime culprits when it comes to abandoning universal human rights both at home and abroad. Their complicity in the Gaza genocide and Israel’s relentless war crimes looms large.
It’s virtually impossible to keep count of the myriad examples, even just in recent history, when they have betrayed these principles, throwing them out the window whenever convenient, and ignoring the most fundamental and sacred aspects of the rule of law, such as respecting national sovereignty and territorial integrity.
Judging from the recent declarations of leaders like Merz, who maintains that now is “not the moment to lecture our allies”, and Von der Leyen, who advocates a “more realistic” foreign policy (code for simply forgetting about such embarrassing straightjackets as international law), they seem to be openly shredding these values out of a mix of convenience, weakness and hypocrisy.
Almost as much as the US and Israel, the EU has lost the right to lament violations of human rights and the end of the “rules-based” postwar world order, as they have directly contributed to its demise.
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