‘No Winston Churchill’: Trump opens new rift with Europe as leaders try to avoid being sucked into Iran war
By Issy Ronald, CNN
London (CNN) — US President Donald Trump sat alongside his German counterpart Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office on Tuesday and unleashed a broadside against some of his European allies.
“This is not Winston Churchill that we’re dealing with,” he said of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer after once again berating London for denying the US permission to use British military bases in the Chagos Islands – an archipelago in the Indian Ocean – for offensive strikes against Iran.
Not content with criticizing one European leader, Trump laid into Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez too, threatening to impose a full US embargo on Spain in response to the socialist leader’s opposition to US strikes on Iran.
Merz sat next to Trump and remained mostly silent, later telling reporters he “addressed both issues very clearly in a personal conversation … because he didn’t want to air the conflict publicly.”
His words mark yet another rift between Washington and Europe and highlight the delicate balance European leaders have attempted to strike since the US and Israel began bombing Iran on Saturday.
On the one hand, they have sought to support their Gulf allies and placate Washington, under whose NATO security umbrella they remain and whose involvement in any potential peace deal for Ukraine is still essential. On the other hand, the Europeans are minimizing their involvement in a war many of them have refused to say is legal and which is deeply unpopular domestically.
Germany, France and the UK – the E3 countries – stopped short of explicitly condoning or condemning the US-Israeli strikes in a joint statement. Instead, they condemned Iran’s retaliation, reiterated their criticism of the country’s regime, called for a “resumption of negotiations” and said they remained in “close contact with our international partners.”
Still, even as they have framed their involvement as defensive, they risk being sucked into a spiraling regional war. Such dangers were laid bare on Wednesday when NATO air defense systems shot down an Iranian missile traveling towards Turkey’s airspace, in what is believed to be the first instance of the alliance’s forces intercepting an Iranian missile traveling towards a member country’s airspace.
Some European countries have committed military resources to defend their interests in the region. The UK agreed to allow the US to use its military bases for “defensive strikes” on Iran missile sites, Starmer said Sunday. And in response to a drone hitting a British military base in Cyprus on Tuesday, the UK sent helicopters with anti-drone capabilities and a warship, which will take about a week to reach the Mediterranean island.
In the meantime, a French frigate arrived in Cyprus on Tuesday evening, France’s President Emmanuel Macron said, adding that he was also sending “additional air defense assets there.”
French and British air defenses based in the region have also engaged in limited operations, helping to shoot down Iranian drones and missiles, cautious to remain within the bounds of legal warfare.
The Trump administration’s rationale for attacking Iran has been noted as vague and shifting. Trump and his senior officials have contradicted each other, stretching the bounds of logic – and US intelligence estimates – to define the “imminent” threat Iran and its nuclear program posed, without giving any evidence. They have brushed aside US intelligence which suggested Iran would need until 2035 to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile, if it chose to, as well as Trump’s own claims the program was “obliterated” by US strikes last summer.
As a former human rights lawyer well-versed in the intricacies of international law, Starmer has shied away from committing to a war of dubious legal standing.
Notably, the UK’s legal advice provided only for the country to engage in “collective self-defense of regional allies who have requested support” and facilitate “specific and limited defensive action against missile facilities in Iran which were involved in launching strikes at regional allies.”
“It does not signal the UK having any wider involvement in the broader ongoing conflict between the US, Israel and Iran,” the statement added.
Macron went even further, saying in his address to France on Tuesday that the US-Israeli strikes were “conducted outside the framework of international law,” though he laid the “primary responsibility for this situation” at Iran’s feet.
The E3 grouping, however, does not act as singular entity. Merz stressed he would not lecture his allies about international law, before he headed to Washington to meet with Trump.
And even as Starmer refuses to allow British forces to engage in offensive operations, he highlighted the ways in which the “special relationship (is) in action,” on Wednesday, telling parliament that British jets helping to protect American forces represented the true nature of their alliance rather than “hanging on to President Trump’s latest words.”
Where most European countries are attempting to at least support the US defensively, Sanchez has emerged as the continent’s most vocal critic of Trump, refusing to involve Spain in the war at all even after Trump’s trade threats.
“We’re not going to be complicit in something that’s bad for the world, nor contrary to our values and interests simply to avoid reprisals from someone,” Sanchez said in a televised address to Spain on Wednesday, according to Reuters.
For both European policymakers and the general public, the specter of the Iraq War still looms large over the widening conflict in the Middle East. Joining that war in 2003 remains a deeply unpopular decision by Britain’s previous Labour government and, as the first Labour prime minister since then, Starmer will be eager to avoid a repeat of his party’s mistakes.
Despite winning a landslide majority almost two years ago, he is a diminished figure, battered by challenges from his left and right, most recently suffering an embarrassing by-election loss last week to the progressive Green Party, whose victory was a reminder of left-wing anger towards his government.
Similarly for Sanchez, whose party has had to weather corruption scandals and heavy losses in regional elections last month, criticizing another Western war in the Middle East is safer political ground.
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CNN’s Sebastian Shukla, Pierre Bairin and James Frater contributed reporting.
