“It’s not our war,” Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s top diplomat, said during a leaders’ summit last week on whether to join the US and Israel’s war on Iran and deploy warships to the Strait of Hormuz.
Her comment summed up the sentiment among European leaders, who are taking a new approach to managing an increasingly isolated and enraged Donald Trump.
The US President has lashed out at allies as “COWARDS” for refusing to rush in their navies, claiming that without the US, “NATO IS A PAPER TIGER!” and insisting all that’s required is “a simple military manoeuvre” with little risk.
But Europeans have stood firm, resisting his demands, despite spiralling energy costs with taxpayers in the EU paying 50 per cent more for gas and 27 per cent more for oil, according to EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.
In the UK, household energy bills could rise by more than £330 a year and Sir Keir Starmer has said the Government is consdiering support for the poorest families. He called a Cobra meeting on Monday afternoon to discuss the impact of the war on the cost of living.
Starmer had already said the UK would not be drawn into “a wider war”, and despite a barrage of criticism and insults meant to “put pressure” on him, he told MPs he was “not going to be wavering on this”. On Sunday, the same day the two leaders discussed the war in Iran over the phone, Trump shared a video on his Truth Social account of a skit from the British version of Saturday Night Live mocking the PM.
Despite the strain on the relationship with their key ally across the Atlantic, both the EU and the UK have avoided active military involvement, instead focusing on defensive action.
“Not one but all doors have shut,” Grégoire Roos, director for Europe, Russia and Eurasia at Chatham House in London, told The i Paper. Britain and the EU were “relatively united” in their opposition to Trump’s war, he added. The UK is usually aligned with the US in its missions abroad even when others are sceptical – for instance, France vehemently opposed the Iraq war but the UK joined in.
Smoke rises from an Iranian missile strike in Tel Aviv on Monday, as uncertainty swirled over possible talks to end the three-week Middle East war (Photo: Nicolas Garcia/AFP)As the US President threatens to “obliterate” Iran’s energy network unless it reopens the Strait of Hormuz, the EU and UK are likely to be worried about Iranian retaliation and the ripple effects on the global economy.
With the markets rattled, Trump has extended the deadline of his threat, citing what he claims is progress in talks with Iran. But Tehran has denied any direct or indirect negotiations with the US, leaving allies unclear. Starmer expressed apprehensions about a “quick and early end” to the conflict.
On Tuesday, British defence officials said the President had not made a request to the UK for ground troops, despite reports the US is advancing plans for an operation as it sends more personnel to Iran.
They hinted that Britain would not be willing to participate in any ground invasion, saying: “Our Prime Minister has been very clear about the defensive aims of this campaign from a UK perspective.”
There are various reasons behind Europe’s reluctance to join the war: the absence of prior consultation, the risk to naval personnel escorting cargo vessels, and whether it would be in accordance with international law.
This newfound ability to stand up to the US President perhaps results from European allies’ collective experiences dealing with Trump, and a realisation that despite their attempts to accommodate his wishes, he is still threatening to weaponise trade and defence vulnerabilities.
It indicates a broader shift in strategy for Europe, which until recently was focused on trying to flatter Trump – Starmer visited Washington with a letter from King Charles while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz urged the US to stay with Europe, and Nato chief Mark Rutte even referred to him as Europe’s “Daddy”.
The allies had hoped that increasing their defence spending to 5 per cent of their respective national GDPs, as Trump demanded, and boosting investments in the US by hundreds of billions, would please him and patch up the fraying alliance.
It didn’t.
So when he threatened to invade Greenland and reimpose tariffs on countries that backed Denmark (which claims sovereignty over the self-governing territory), and sided with Russia on the Ukraine war, Europeans changed tack.
They stood up for Denmark and it appeared to pay off, as the US President retreated from the use of force to annex Greenland, at least for now. They resisted joining the Trump-led Board of Peace on Gaza, which experts said may undermine the United Nations while giving him too much power over the Israel-Palestine conflict.
And, as Trump warned he would impose an all–out trade embargo on Spain if it did not give US forces access to Spanish air bases to hit Iran, Europeans including Emmanuel Macron rallied around Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez.
“We stand in full solidarity with all member states,” said Olof Gill, an EU Commission spokesman, “and, through our common trade policy, stand ready to act if necessary to safeguard EU interests.”
When Trump called on Europeans to join the Iran war earlier this month, they said they should have been consulted beforehand and could not be expected to sign up without sufficient clarity on the objectives.
European powers are presumably factoring in public mood, which remains war-averse and critical of Trump. According to a YouGov poll this month, 77 per cent of Britons think the US-Iran conflict will impact the UK and global economies negatively in the longer term.
Dr Antonio Giustozzi from the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi) told The i Paper that Europe’s refusal to join the war was in part also due to what Trump wanted from them. Referring to the Strait of Hormuz, the key shipping lane currently blocked for most vessels due to the war, he said: “Sending ships and especially minehunters to Hormuz, [that] is very high risk.”
In addition, Trump has often insulted European leaders, humiliating them not only at a personal level but also diminishing them in the eyes of their people.
Then there are memories of the Iraq war that have made the UK and Spain hesitant. Roos highlighted these nations as “two countries where parliamentary opposition to the war is the most vocal, but both followed [George] Bush in Iraq in 2003”.
Referring to the claim at the time that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Roos drew a link between the UK and Spain’s decision to deploy troops in Iraq, and the London bombings in 2005 and Madrid train bombings in 2004. “There were no WMDs… but both Spain and the UK suffered horrendous terrorist attacks,” he said.
In a reflection of how far Trump has driven the Europeans, Belgian PM Bart de Wever’s suggestion to engage Moscow is telling. Last month, on a cold and rainy day in a Belgian castle, after European leaders met informally to discuss economic competitiveness, he told me the bloc needed “an energy union” – an integrated energy market among 27 EU member states to reduce electricity prices and ensure energy independence.
A month later, as energy prices spiked further due to the Iran war, he advocated normalising “relations with Russia and regaining access to cheap energy”, but did not commit to sending warships to the Strait of Hormuz.
Yet this is a balancing act for Europe. The Europeans have real dependencies on the US in defence, technology and financial infrastructure.
Perhaps this is why the UK, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and nearly a dozen others issued a deliberately vague statement last Thursday, expressing readiness to contribute to “appropriate measures” to ensure safe passage through the Strait, but saying nothing about a military intervention.
The UK has allowed the US to use British bases to hit Iranian forces that are threatening ships in the Strait of Hormuz, and an attack on a joint US-British airbase over the weekend also tested the British resolve to stay out of the war.
France, Germany and Italy have signalled some willingness to help safeguard freedom of navigation, but only under tighter conditions and after a ceasefire.
Anchal Vohra is a Brussels-based columnist for Foreign Policy magazine and a commentator on Europe and the Middle East
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