IN a brazenly lawless world, it might have been futile to expect that the indisputable illegality of the US-Israeli aggression against Iran would encounter much resistance even from nations that regularly pay lip-service to the concept of a rules-based order. The paucity of resistance to an international outrage is nonetheless striking.
There are barely any exceptions across Europe apart from Spain’s commendable stance. The government of Pedro Sánchez denied the US use of joint military bases, established more than 70 years ago during the heyday of the Franco dictatorship, to be used for a criminal mission. Donald Trump threatened to break off ties and block trade. Soon afterwards the White House declared that Spain had capitulated. Madrid dismissed that as nonsense, secure in the knowledge that tariffs could not arbitrarily be raised without targeting the rest of the EU.
The Sánchez government is something of an outlier in the EU as well as Nato, defying the trend (alongside Ireland) towards ignoring Gaza genocide, while also refusing to increase its military budget to five per cent. There are domestic considerations, too. The Socialist Party (PSOE) relies on left-wing allies for its parliamentary majority. Beset by scandals, it’s unlikely to win the next election, and future conservative rule could presage a relapse towards the kind of foreign policy pursued by José María Aznar, who paid the political cost of unreservedly backing the Bush strategy in Iraq.
The current government has been criticised for maintaining economic ties with Israel while lambasting its actions (the same goes for Ireland). But Sánchez is correct in insisting that his government’s attitude against the assault on Iran is consistent with its approach towards Ukraine. Volodymyr Zelensky apparently lacks that understanding. Kyiv has not only hailed the US-Israeli misadventure, it has also dispatched drone experts to help protect US military assets in Jordan.
Why is criticism of the illegal war on Iran so muted?
Much of the rest of Europe falls in a similar category. Germany’s Friedrich Merz is arguably the worst offender, nodding along as Trump lashed out against Spain in the Oval Office. Keir Starmer initially challenged the concept of imposing regime change from the skies, but did not take too long to fall in line and offer the use of co-owned airbases in the UK and Diego Garcia as long as the intent was ‘defensive’ — which is precisely the excuse that the US and Israel have absurdly cited for their devastation of Iran. His counterparts in Australia and Canada have proved to be even dumber, and France too is hedging its bets. Nations such as Italy recognise the illegality of the US-Israeli misadventure, but do not dare to call it out.
Much of the Muslim world is no different. Indonesia was the first to offer troops for a proposed ‘peacekeeping’ mission in Gaza that would be commanded by the US and guided by Israel. Prabowo Subianto’s gesture in offering to mediate between Iran and its adversaries was presumably guided by domestic considerations. Pakistan has belatedly posed as another potential mediator. The first thing these and other countries ought to have done after the attack on Tehran is to have pulled out of Trump’s monstrous Board of Peace (BoP). But then, any self-respecting nation would not have signed up to it in the first place.
Most of the Gulf states pretended to be taken by surprise when they came under attack from Iran, which shattered their complacent self-image as calm harbours in a volatile region. They couldn’t have been unaware that a massive attack on Tehran would provoke it to lash out at Arab neighbours hosting US military bases. Publicly, almost all of them have verbally assaulted Iran, without identifying the primary source of their unexpected woes. Yet there are indications that deep inside they know better.
Among them is a tweet from Emirati billionaire Khalaf Ahmad Al Habtoor, who directly challenged Trump: “Who gave you the authority to drag our region into a war with #Iran? And on what basis did you make this dangerous decision?”, he asked. “Did you calculate the collateral damage before pulling the trigger? And did you consider that the first to suffer from this escalation will be the countries of the region itself! … Was this your decision alone? Or did it come as a result of pressures from Netanyahu and his government?”
He continued in a similar vein, wondering whether BoP funds were actually financing a new war. Significantly, Habtoor was fully on board with the so-called Abraham Accords, and his vast fortune includes profits from trade with Israel. Given the constraints on social media posts in the UAE, it’s unlikely he could have had his say without official permission. If his opinion reflects the feelings Gulf rulers dare not publicly articulate, the US and Israel are on a hiding to nothing.
Published in Dawn, March 11th, 2026