The Brief

NATO allies remain deeply divided as the US-Israel war on Iran enters its second week, with Germany permitting use of Ramstein Air Base and France authorising American aircraft at French installations while President Macron simultaneously declared the strikes “outside the framework of international law.” Spain has barred US operations from its bases entirely, EU Commission President von der Leyen has told ambassadors that Europe’s citizens are “caught in the crossfire,” and oil prices have surged past $120 a barrel.

The Report

Europe’s response to the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran has fractured along lines that cut through NATO, the EU, and individual governments — sometimes within a single capital.

Germany has provided the most unambiguous support. Chancellor Friedrich Merz permitted US operations from Ramstein Air Base and told President Trump the two nations were “on the same page” regarding the removal of Iran’s regime. “We share the interest of the United States and Israel in seeing an end to this regime’s terror,” Merz stated, adding that “now is not the moment to lecture our partners and allies.” Trump responded by praising Germany publicly: “Germany’s been great. They’re letting us land in certain areas, and we appreciate it.”

France adopted a position that several analysts have described as internally contradictory. President Macron declared the American and Israeli strikes were conducted “outside the framework of international law” — diplomatic language that amounts to calling the operation illegal — then authorised US military aircraft to use French bases for non-combat operations in the conflict zone. France simultaneously deployed the Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and escort frigates toward the Eastern Mediterranean. Jean-Luc Mélenchon of La France Insoumise called the base access “unacceptable,” warning it could render France a co-belligerent.

Spain took the hardest line, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez barring US military aircraft from Spanish bases and accusing Trump and Netanyahu of “using the smoke of war to hide their own failures.” Trump responded by threatening to “cut off all trade with Spain.” The United Kingdom occupied an intermediate position, with PM Keir Starmer initially refusing base access before permitting the use of RAF Akrotiri on Cyprus for “purely defensive purposes” — a distinction Trump dismissed, posting that “we don’t need people that join wars after we’ve already won.”

NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said he felt “widespread support” for the campaign among alliance leaders, while underscoring that NATO as an institution was “not involved.” Poland, the Baltic states, the Czech Republic, and Romania offered clear political backing, framing the conflict through a broader security lens.

At the EU level, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen told ambassadors that Europe’s citizens were “caught in the crossfire,” citing an Iranian drone strike on a British base in EU-member Cyprus, disrupted shipping routes, and energy prices that had pushed oil past $120 per barrel and European gas prices up 30 percent. Economy Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis warned of a “substantial inflationary shock” if the conflict becomes protracted. A poll showed 59 percent of the German public opposed the US-Israeli campaign, even as their government facilitated it.

Von der Leyen and European Council President António Costa convened an online summit with leaders from the UAE, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria. Von der Leyen noted that “there should be no tears shed for the Iranian regime” while stressing Europe’s 90-day emergency oil stocks remained intact. The meeting produced no unified European position on the conflict itself — only on the need to protect EU shipping and citizens in the region.

The Angle

France’s position is the one worth examining closely, because it is the one that reveals most about how European foreign policy actually functions under pressure. Macron did not contradict himself accidentally. He issued a legal condemnation calibrated for the UN General Assembly and a base-access authorisation calibrated for the Pentagon — and delivered them within the same news cycle, to different audiences, through different channels. The legal critique preserves France’s diplomatic positioning with the Global South and its self-image as an independent actor. The base access preserves the relationship that keeps French defence procurement, intelligence sharing, and Mediterranean logistics running. Both are rational. Neither is principled. The word for this arrangement is not hypocrisy. It is the structural output of a country that wants to remain a major power without possessing the capacity to act like one independently.

Germany’s position is simpler and, for that reason, more clarifying. Merz chose alignment over ambiguity. The domestic cost — 59 percent opposition — is real, but the calculation is transparent: Germany’s security architecture runs through Washington, and the price of that architecture is occasionally being seen to facilitate things the public would rather not see facilitated. This is not leadership. It is dependency accurately priced.

What the split actually exposes is not a disagreement about Iran. It is the absence of any European mechanism capable of producing a unified strategic response to an event this large. Twenty-seven member states, two overlapping institutional frameworks, a mutual defence clause that has never been invoked, and a continent whose citizens are absorbing a 30 percent gas price surge while their governments argue over whether the war causing it is legal. Von der Leyen’s observation that Europe is “caught in the crossfire” is accurate in a way she may not have intended. You get caught in crossfire when you are standing in a space you do not control, between forces you cannot direct, without a position of your own.