Ellie Geranmayeh and Julien Barnes-Dacey write:

Europeans had weeks of notice that US president Donald Trump was about to trigger a war in the Middle East. The conflict is now wreaking carnage in the world’s most energy-rich region on an hourly basis, increasing the direct costs to Europeans and boosting Russia’s war coffers. But Europe’s collective response has been, at best, a fiasco—and at worst, strategic lunacy.

Europe on the sidelines
Instead of looking for ways to press Trump to end the conflict and help the region find a political off-ramp, several key European actors are cheerleading on the sidelines.

In sharp contrast to the principled stance from Spain, which has called it an illegal war devoid of an effective strategy, Germany has publicly said it will not “lecture” the US on international law (despite years of doing so on Ukraine). It is also actively supporting—as European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, initially did—Trump’s call for Iranian regime change.

Since the onset of fighting, European officials across the board have also focused on condemning Iran for its counter-retaliation, without reference to the US and Israel’s initiation of the war at a moment when Tehran posed no immediate threat. For their part, Britain and France are only hesitantly calling out the illegality of the US-Israeli attacks while steadily increasing material support for the operation.

Britain is now permitting the launching of direct “defensive” strikes into Iranian territory from its military bases. French president Emmanuel Macron described the attacks as “conducted outside of international law” but immediately downplayed this by suggesting that Iran’s tyrants had it coming. French bases are also now supporting US operations.

Defending regional interests
Europeans should of course defend their citizens and assets in the region. Drone attacks, apparently launched by the Lebanese group Hezbollah, have already targeted a British military base in Cyprus and Iran has hit a French base in the UAE. European governments should also support Arab countries to defend themselves by shooting down Iranian drones and missiles heading them.

But the E3 (Britain, France and Germany) risk getting sucked into a deeper conflict. Not only will Trump quickly demand more, but the use of European bases in support of US military operations exposes them to retaliatory strikes by Iran. This would risk accelerating “mission creep”—dragging Europe into a regime-change war that already has all the hallmarks of a catastrophe, given the lack of US strategic objectives and planning. [Continue reading…]