President Donald Trump’s war against Iran has widened the rift with America’s European allies. Tensions surfaced last week when Trump threatened a full trade embargo on Spain after Madrid refused to allow U.S. forces to launch strikes from bases on its territory. Sitting beside Trump in the Oval Office, a visibly uncomfortable German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declined to defend Madrid—even when a German journalist raised the issue directly. The moment captured the dilemma confronting Europe: Many governments harbor deep reservations about the expanding U.S.-Israel campaign against Iran, yet few feel able to challenge Washington openly. The result is a fragmented response driven less by alignment with the White House than by fear of retaliation from Trump.
Military action against Iran is deeply unpopular with European publics. In Germany, a recent ARD-DeutschlandTrend survey found that 58 percent of respondents believe the war waged by the United States and Israel against Iran is unjustified, while roughly three-quarters worry the conflict could spread regionally. This suggests that Chancellor Merz, who has chosen not to publicly challenge Washington, may well pay a political cost at home.
Even so, public skepticism of the war has not meaningfully moved European leaders. If anything, it has underscored how constrained they feel in dealing with Trump. Their caution may be understandable, but it carries risks of its own. By refusing to articulate a clear alternative to Trump’s militarism, centrist governments leave space for far-right and nationalist parties to present themselves as the only political forces willing to defend European interests.
Germany, the United Kingdom, and other centrist governments across Europe remain reluctant to challenge U.S. pressure, despite political risks at home
Across Europe, the underlying calculation has become clear: Governments seek to placate Trump today in order to preserve the economic and security relationships that remain critical to their countries tomorrow. For Germany and the United Kingdom, that dependence takes different forms but leads to the same strategic outcome. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer can scarcely risk a trade conflict with Washington, nor can Berlin replace American security guarantees through deficit-financed spending alone—at least not yet. The United Kingdom, for its part, remains deeply reliant on U.S. intelligence, defense-industrial cooperation, and the broader Anglo-American security architecture that no prime minister can so easily disentangle. If Trump feels slighted, any of these dependencies, and many others, could become sources of acute vulnerability for Europe.
Germany
Germany illustrates these structural constraints most clearly. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Berlin moved to build liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals to replace Russian pipeline supplies. Today, roughly 96 percent of the LNG arriving at those facilities originates in the United States, part of a broader shift in which American gas exporters now provide more than a quarter of Europe’s imports.
Yet this new energy reliance does not insulate Europe from global shocks. LNG operates as a worldwide market where disruptions anywhere tighten supply everywhere. The war with Iran has laid that vulnerability bare. Qatar—one of the world’s largest LNG exporters, accounting for roughly 20 percent of global supply—has already seen production disrupted, sending gas prices sharply higher. If those disruptions persist, governments across Europe will find themselves competing for scarce cargoes in an already tight market alongside India and energy-hungry East Asian economies. In that scenario, even U.S. LNG would flow to the highest bidder, raising the specter of renewed price spikes and the return of an energy-driven recession in Europe.
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Germany already faces mounting economic pressure at home. In 2025 alone, the country lost more than 120,000 industrial jobs, driven in part by energy costs that remain roughly three times higher than those in the United States. The political consequences are already visible. In one recent state election in Germany’s automotive heartland, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) nearly doubled its vote share to 18.8 percent from 9.7 in 2021, with four more regional contests still to come. Berlin’s room to maneuver is therefore narrowing rapidly. Combine the prospect of a fresh energy shock to tight fiscal margins, the historic need for defense spending, and the yet simmering possibility of another migration crisis, and the magnitude of the risk facing Europe’s largest economy comes into focus.
Still, Merz is unlikely to break decisively with Washington over Iran. Most recently, he authorized the use of American bases in Germany to coordinate drone and missile strikes against Iran. For Berlin, the imperative to preserve the transatlantic relationship outweighs the many political risks at home. Europe’s largest economies remain deeply entangled with American power—through security guarantees, energy markets, and trade ties that no government can quickly replace.
Publicly confronting Washington could invite economic or security retaliation at a moment when Europe can least afford it.
That reality explains the uneasy silence from European capitals as the conflict with Iran expands. Publicly confronting Washington could invite economic or security retaliation at a moment when Europe can least afford it. The result is a pattern of reluctant alignment: Governments distance themselves rhetorically from Trump’s escalation while quietly accommodating Washington’s belligerence.
The United Kingdom
The United Kingdom, for example, has publicly refused to join the offensive campaign but agreed to provide defensive support, including allowing U.S. forces to use British bases to strike Iranian missile sites. That decision marked a quiet retreat from Prime Minister Starmer’s earlier insistence that the United States could not use the joint U.S.-U.K. base at Diego Garcia for offensive operations. That nuance appeared lost on Trump, who said that the special relationship with the United Kingdom was “obviously not what it was,” before going on to disparage a U.K.-brokered agreement to transfer sovereignty over the contested Chagos island chain to Mauritius—suggesting, again, that anything short of full alignment with this administration counts as disloyalty.
Trump’s bluster aside, the reversal reflects the difficult position London now faces: Like Merz, Starmer is wary of jeopardizing a precarious trade deal with Washington amid slow economic growth at home and the enormous costs of rearmament required to meet the Russian threat. Despite strong opposition within his own Labour Party and more than a little equivocating, Starmer has chosen to prioritize the stability of the United Kingdom’s relationship with Trump. Most recently, London authorized the use of RAF Fairford by American B-1 bombers for active operations.
Other European allies
Elsewhere, European responses have ranged from a defensive posture to cautious backing. Lithuania, on NATO’s eastern flank, signaled it could back military operations if asked. Italy has sought to avoid direct involvement while deploying antimissile systems to Gulf partners. France has struck a more openly cautious tone, with President Emmanuel Macron describing the U.S.-Israeli strikes as outside the bounds of international law, even while deploying military assets to defend French interests in the region—including, most recently, in Lebanon.
None of these steps amounts to active participation in the war. Instead, they reflect a broader strategic conundrum: Europe must manage the consequences of an unpopular conflict it did not choose—from migration flows to energy costs—while also navigating structural dependencies on the United States.
Europe need not kowtow to the Trump administration, as shown by Spain’s approach
This strategic conundrum stands in sharp contrast to then-German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer famously confronting the United States in 2003 over its feeble intelligence claims on Iraq, declaring, “I am not convinced.” At the time, Paris and Berlin stood at the center of European opposition to the invasion. But “old Europe,” as some American policymakers have derisively labeled it, did not face a full-scale war on its continent. Nor was it reeling from an acute energy crisis. Today, by contrast, Europe’s overriding priority is to keep Washington aligned in support of Ukraine.
Yet the situation carries a profound irony. U.S.-Israeli strikes in the Middle East have generated the type of energy shock that strengthens Russia’s fiscal position and helps finance its war on Ukraine. Donald Trump’s proposed easing of sanctions on Russian oil—including the issuance of energy waivers for the purchase of seaborne Russian crude—only increases Russia’s financial windfall from the war, leaving Europe to contend with an emboldened Vladimir Putin. This leaves America’s European allies in a position of uneasy restraint. Few governments in Europe wish to endorse a widening Middle Eastern war; even fewer are prepared to risk a transatlantic rupture. Their logic, however, has its limits. Appeasing Trump may ultimately encourage the very recklessness Europeans so studiously seek to avoid.
Spain
Spain’s position therefore stands out. Madrid’s refusal to allow operations from U.S. bases places it at the other end of Europe’s response spectrum. Geography may explain part of that confidence. Spain sits far from the front lines of both the war in Ukraine and the escalating conflict in the Middle East, giving Madrid greater room to maneuver than many of its Eastern European partners.
Domestic politics also matter. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez leads a coalition positioned to the left of Keir Starmer’s government in the United Kingdom, and Sánchez’s criticism of the war has played well at home—a lesson other politicians across Europe might note. Still, the most important reason to resist Trump’s pressure may be much simpler: Standing up to him can work.
Alliances cannot endure if one side governs through threats while the other responds with silence.
When European governments rallied behind Denmark during Trump’s pressure campaign over Greenland, a bond market sell-off helped force him to step back. Spain’s defiance hints at a similar lesson. Europe may possess more leverage than many of its leaders assume—especially when they act together. American power abroad still relies heavily on European cooperation, from access to military bases to intelligence-sharing and sanctions enforcement.
Yet if centrist governments fail to push back, they risk ceding the political terrain to the far right. Ironically, some of the sharpest criticism of the Iran war has come not only from the center left in Spain but also from nationalist and far-right figures eager to exploit the vacuum. Opposition leaders such as Jordan Bardella, the president of France’s far-right National Rally, and AfD co-leader Tino Chrupalla in Germany have framed the strikes as an American war of choice, signaling discomfort with the escalation and calling for an immediate accounting of war aims.
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Conclusion
European leaders now face a delicate balancing act. They must maintain cooperation with the United States while dealing with a White House that increasingly treats alliances as instruments of leverage. Yet Europe does not need to kowtow to Trump to protect its vital interests. On the contrary, alliances cannot endure if one side governs through threats while the other responds with silence. When European governments fail to defend one another under pressure, they do not preserve the transatlantic relationship; they weaken it.