Madrid’s words and actions regarding West Asia once again stand in stark contrast with those of the continent’s “Big Three”, Germany, France and the UK.
Spain’s Pedro Sánchez government was already in Donald J Trump’s bad books, particularly over his refusal to increase Spain’s military spending to 5% of GDP and his government’s imposition of sanctions on Israel. However, his announcement yesterday (March 2) that US planes would not be allowed to use jointly operated bases in Rota and Morón for the purpose of its war against Iran is likely to draw even more flak.
Defence Minister Margarita Robles said “no assistance of any kind, absolutely none,” had been provided from the Rota and Morón bases in southern Spain, which are shared with the US but remain under Spanish command.
“We have condemned the Iranian regime’s brutality towards its people, we have supported the brave women [of Iran] and we have voted in favour of sanctions,” said Foreign Minister Manuel Albares. “But the unilateral action of the US and Israel has no place in the UN Charter. Neither peace nor stability nor democracy ever come hand in hand with the use of violence.”
In short, Madrid sees the US-Israeli offensive against Iran as an illegal war of choice, not a defensive action, and as such feels legally bound to deny the use of its bases for anything outside its bilateral treaty with the US.
The announcement was quickly followed by confirmation from Reuters that roughly a dozen had left the two bases since Saturday, including nine tankers that departed Sunday from Morón for Germany. Flight map data from FlightRadar24 apparently showed that seven of those planes landed at NATO’s Ramstein base in Germany.
The move represents another logistical setback for the US’ war efforts. Spain is home to NATO military infrastructure and bases used by the United States, making it a link in the Western logistics chain.
Spain’s Premier Pedro Sánchez has explicitly condemned the US and Israel’s “unilateral military action” against Iran while also criticising Iran for attacking many of its neighbours, some of them key energy providers for the EU.
“Violence is only going to bring more violence,” Sánchez warned in a speech at the Mobile Congress in Barcelona.
For his part, Albares on Monday said that while the government wanted “democracy, freedom and fundamental rights for the Iranian people”, it would on no account allow its bases to be used in the ongoing military action.
“Each country makes its decisions in foreign policy. Spain has a very clear position: the voice of Europe has to be at this time a voice of balance and moderation, of working for de-escalation and for a return to the negotiating tables,” said Albares. “A logic of violence… only leads to a spiral of violence and unilateral military actions outside the Charter of the United Nations… Europe must defend international law, de-escalation and negotiation.”
The Spanish government’s words and actions regarding West Asia once again stand in stark contrast with those of many of its European counterparts, particularly the so-called “Big Three”, Germany, France and the UK. As the BBC’s Katya Adler puts it, “since the US-Israeli attack started on Iran three days ago, this continent has looked at best uncoordinated, if not fractured and decidedly without leverage, caught up in the maelstrom of events.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen is once again providing cover for Washington and Tel Aviv’s blatant war crimes. In the statement below, she doesn’t even mention the US and Israel’s role in launching this war of choice while telling Iran that it “must cease its reckless and indiscriminate attacks on its neighbours and sovereign countries.”
VdL has adopted this position even as many of Europe’s top legal minds have described the US and Israel’s attack on Iran as a flagrant war crime. The European Journal of International Law said that “this use of force by the US and Israel is manifestly illegal. It is as plain a violation of the prohibition on the use of force in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter as one could possibly have.”
Even retired Air Force Lt. Col. Rachel Van Landingham, the former legal chief at US Central Command — i.e., the people who are carrying out the bombings on Iran — had this to say:
Not only does this violate international law in numerous respects, it clearly violates the U.S. Constitution and the War Powers Resolution.
None of this has stopped the UK’s Keir Starmer, another supposed expert in international law, from allowing the US to use not only military bases in the UK to strike Iranian targets but also its Diego Garcia base in the Indian Ocean, describing it is a “defensive” step. The irony is that for a brief moment Starmer hesitated to make that decision, probably due to all the legal ramifications, and that was enough to draw Trump’s ire, reports the Guardian:
The UK “took far too long” to allow US forces to use its airbases to attack Iran, Donald Trump has said.
The US president added that he was “very disappointed” in Keir Starmer over the British government’s deal to hand sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius as a means to preserve the status of the UK-US airbase on Diego Garcia, part of the Indian Ocean archipegalo.
The Chagos deal, which Trump initially supported before changing his mind, was a “very woke thing”, the US president argued…
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Trump said Starmer was too slow to change his mind, adding: “It took far too much time. Far too much time.
“That’s probably never happened between our countries before. It sounds like he was worried about the legality.”
As commenters have pointed out, Starmer’s decision to allow the US to use UK airbases makes the UK a co-belligerent in yet another US-Israeli misadventure.
As the British journalist Matt Kennard notes, the US has over a dozen military sites in the UK as well as 135 undisclosed locations.
Once again, the leaders of Europe’s largest countries are bending over backwards to accommodate a US government that doesn’t give a family blog about them, and constantly reminds them of that fact. Meanwhile, that same US government has admitted that it joined Israel’s attack on Iran solely because it knew Israel itself had already greenlit its own attack.
As Arnaud Betrand notes below, it’s literally the equivalent of saying, “I knew that guy was a threat because I knew he’d shoot back after getting shot by my friend.”
It is also definitive proof that Israel is, and always has been, the tail that wags the US’s dog, as even CNN’s security analyst reluctantly admits in the clip below.
Like the Starmer administration, Germany’s Merz government is also allowing US planes to refuel at German bases, and may even have harboured Israel’s “wanted” prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu for a brief period. As the FT reports, “Merz, who is due to meet the US president at the White House on Tuesday, has suggested the strikes that killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei were justified while condemning Iran’s retaliatory strikes”:
“International rules have relatively little effect — all the more so when violations carry few consequences,” Merz said on Sunday. “Now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies. For all our doubts, we share many of their goals — even if we are not in a position to achieve them ourselves.”
Merz has form — when Trump joined Benjamin Netanyahu in targeting Iranian nuclear facilities last year, he said Israel was doing “our dirty work”.
Yet for Germany — long the self-styled guardian of international law, which joined France in condemning the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and helped negotiate the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran — the shift is particularly striking.
On late Sunday night, the leaders (for want of a better word) of Europe’s so-called “E3” — Germany, France and the UK — issued a statement blasting Iran for its “indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks… against countries in the region.”
This is a common thread in many of the official statements from European leaders — that Iran’s response to the US and Israel’s unprovoked attack that not only killed its national and religious leader but also laid waste to schools, hospitals and residential areas, killing hundreds of civilians, was somehow disproportionate.
The three leaders also said they would take steps to defend both their own and allied interests in the region by “enabling necessary and proportionate defensive actions to destroy Iran’s capability to launch missiles and drones.” They plan to coordinate these actions with the US.
Those actions will no doubt further undermine the European economy — and by extension, its political stability, social cohesion and regional unity…
Nick Corbishley 