War comes to the EU's doorstep – again
The EU has been dragged into Trump's war with Iran. Last night Iran launched a drone attack on Cyprus as Britain, France and Germany announced they will cooperate with the US to protect themselves.
This morning, families are being evacuated from a UK military base in Cyprus following last night’s drone attack by Iran. Air raid sirens went off just before midnight as F-35B Lightning jets were scrambled to intercept the attack. At least one drone reportedly hit a runway, causing a loud explosion and damage to the airfield. No one was injured.
UK Defence Minister John Healey had already said Sunday morning that Iran launched two missiles toward Cyprus the day before, something the Cypriot government claimed to have no knowledge of. As part of its decolonising agreement with Cyprus when it gained independence from the British Empire in 1960, the UK has two exclaves on the island that house the military bases of Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Cyprus is within Iran’s range of missile attack along with the EU countries Greece, Bulgaria and Romania – though missiles launched at such a long distance have greatly reduced accuracy. That is worrying for the government of Cyprus, because a missile or drone intended for a UK military base could easily hit the city of Limassol instead.
It is also worrying for the whole EU, because Cyprus currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council and is supposed to be hosting summits of ministers and national leaders over the next four months. In fact, despite the warnings of Iranian bombardment, Cyprus yesterday was still saying it would go ahead with a planned meeting of EU ministers in Lefkosia today. This morning, the summit was abruptly postponed indefinitely – raising questions about the future of the presidency events given that this war is expected to last for weeks at least. It is hard to imagine all of the EU’s prime ministers and presidents convening for a summit in Cyprus under such risk.
The Cyprus attack comes amid a wave of Iranian retribution attacks against countries in the region which were not involved in the initial US-Israel attack but who are US allies. Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, UAE and Saudi Arabia have all been bombarded by Iranian missiles – and not just against US military bases in their countries as happened during the limited US surgical strikes on Iran last June. This time, Iran is targeting civilians in those countries. The shocking images of luxury hotels going up in flames in Dubai after being hit by Iranian drones have gone around the world this weekend – a perhaps fatal blow to Dubai’s promise of being a safe and stable haven in an otherwise volatile region. The Dubai and Abu Dhabi airports were also hit, resulting in deaths and injuries on the ground. Airspace across the Middle East has been closed, leaving thousands of Europeans stranded. One of them is the Italian defence minister, who incredibly decided to go to Dubai on a family vacation Friday night (showing that Trump’s supposed ally Giorgia Meloni was not briefed about the attacks before they happened). Italy is reportedly working on trying to evacuate him with a military aircraft, but this will not include a wider airlift of the many Italian tourists who have found themselves trapped there.
Last night, the leaders of Germany, France and Britain announced they are preparing to cooperate with the United States in attacks against Iranian missile launch sites in order to "defend our interests and those of our allies in the region." They condemned Iran’s “indiscriminate attacks” on GCC countries that are not participating in the US-Israel operation and did not even allow the use of their airspace. Keir Starmer has taken the extra step of reversing course on his previous decision not to let the Americans use the British military base on Diego Garcia and elsewhere to stage their attacks on Iran. Announcing the decision in an address to the British people, Starmer insisted that the UK is still not a belligerent in this war and that the country had learned lessons from the “mistakes of Iraq”. The UK “will not join offensive action [for] now,” he said, as he warned Iran to “stop these reckless attacks immediately”. But the ‘for now’ is going to make a lot of people very nervous. Because if the UK, France and Germany are going to start bombing Iranian military sites along with the US (or at least helping the US to do so), its going to be very hard to say Europe isn’t participating. They may not have been part of the decision to launch the war, but it looks like they are getting dragged into the war nonetheless.
President Macron stressed this weekend that France was neither informed of nor involved in the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, adding that other countries in the region and French allies were also not notified. Nevertheless, a French naval base in UAE was struck by Iran yesterday. In response, he said, France will bolster its military presence around Iran.
The EU as a whole is going to step up its military presence in the region. A senior EU official told journalists yesterday that Operation Aspides, an EU naval operation guarding commercial ships in the Red Sea and Gulf of Yemen, will be reinforced with two French naval vessels – joining French Italian and Greek vessels already there. The EU may decide to adjust the mission’s rules of engagement so that it could act more decisively than it has so far.
Last night EU foreign ministers held a video call to try to come up with a united response to this weekend’s dizzying events (they did not succeed) and to talk about how to evacuate EU citizens from the region. They also must deal with the impact of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which could very quickly cause an energy shortage and price spikes in Europe.
Today EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen will convene a special meeting of the Security College, a reduced list of commissioners involved with defence and security, energy and migration.
But the big question that Europe is confronting today, as Iran sends missiles and drones toward an EU member state, is how this continent can defend itself and its interests without getting dragged into America and Israel’s war of choice. So far, most European leaders have stressed that they were not involved but have refused to condemn or even comment on the legality of the US-Israeli operation. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz even declared international law irrelevant yesterday when asked about it. European reaction has been divided into three categories: those who cheered it (Hungary, Czechia), those who neither cheered it nor condemned it (Germany, France, Britain, most others) and those who condemned it (only Spain’s Pedro Sanchez). Spain appears to be the only European country left still defending international law.
That middle category is going to be harder to maintain as European countries start allowing the US to use their bases and start attacking Iran themselves. Europeans may see a distinction between who participated in the initial launch of the war and who joined later after their assets or neutral allies were attacked, but the world will not. Nor will historians. Do you remember which European countries joined the fray in World War I immediately and which joined later?
What’s clear is that a second war is erupting in the Middle East, just south of the existing war in Ukraine. This is going to have an enormous impact not only in the region but also in Europe, which is after all just next door. This was a war of choice launched by the Americans and Israelis, with seemingly no plan for what comes next. Despite the death of Ayatollah Khamenei, it is unlikely that the regime is going to surrender any time soon and the US is unlikely to commit to a ground invasion that can remove them by force. They are relying on the people of Iran rising up and removing the regime in response to the calls from America and Israel. If that doesn’t happen, then this war is going to go on for weeks, months, maybe years. At this point it is hard to see a scenario in which this situation does not escalate. And our European leaders, despite their insistence that they weren’t involved in starting this war, are nonetheless set to inevitably get dragged into it – because still none of them are willing to stand up to the United States.