Some European Leaders Are Now Openly Challenging Trump Over Iran

It is unfair to assert that Starmer is a spineless jellyfish. That's deeply offensive to jellyfish. As for Sanchez? I think the term "pussy" is more appropriate under the circumstances.

Some European Leaders Are Now Openly Challenging Trump Over Iran

The leaders of Britain and Spain have engaged in a war of words with Trump over a conflict they say is illegal and unwise

By David Luhnow, Max Colchester and Bertrand Benoit, WSJ

March 4, 2026 3:14 pm ET

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez openly opposed the U.S. attack on Iran.

LONDON—For the past year, most European leaders took pains not to offend President Trump. The Iran conflict has brought a swift end to that honeymoon—for at least two leaders.

The leaders of Britain and Spain ratcheted up their war of words with the president on Wednesday, spelling out why they didn’t back the U.S. attack on Iran, calling it both illegal and unwise.

“We can’t play Russian roulette with the destiny of millions of people,” Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said. “The powers involved in this conflict should immediately stop the hostilities.”

Earlier in the week, Trump threatened to halt all trade with Spain after it blocked the U.S. from using its bases to launch the Iran strikes. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Spain had agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military.

Asked if Spain was now cooperating on the Iran strikes, Alexandra Gil, a government spokeswoman, had a one-word answer: “False.”

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer told lawmakers that the U.K. wasn’t going to join a war unless it was legal and there “was a viable, thought-through plan.” He has criticized the conflict for lacking an endgame, saying he didn’t think regime change could come from an air war, and referenced the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which resulted in a quagmire.

Starmer and Trump have traded barbs in recent days. The U.S. leader said that he was disappointed that Starmer failed to endorse the U.S. plan and took a few days before allowing the U.S. to launch “defensive” strikes from U.K. bases.

“This is not Winston Churchill we’re dealing with,” Trump said on Tuesday, contrasting Starmer with the famed British wartime leader.

Ever since Trump began his second term, Europe has sought to mollify the U.S. leader. They didn’t get angry when Trump stopped military and financial aid for Ukraine. They didn’t retaliate to Trump’s unilateral tariffs. And they generally haven’t taken the bait when Trump or other administration officials have sharply criticized Europe.

The reason is simple: Europe still relies on the U.S. for its security in the face of a hostile Russia, as a major source of energy, and as the largest market for European exports.

The first signs of European resistance came on the topic of Greenland, when Europeans together pushed back against Trump’s demand to annex the Danish territory.

Some major European countries, like Germany, are sticking by the don’t-anger-Trump playbook. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the U.S. and Israeli military attacks “good news for Iran…and good news for the world.” He has pointedly refused to criticize the war, saying “this isn’t the moment to lecture our partners.”

French President Emmanuel Macron said that the U.S. attack wasn’t in accordance with international law, but has kept public rebukes to America limited. Others, like Ireland and Norway, have been more outspoken.

That Spain’s Socialist leader broke ranks is perhaps less surprising; the Spanish have resisted Trump’s calls for higher military spending and have proved lukewarm on supporting Ukraine.

“We are not going to be accomplices in something that is bad for the world…simply out of fear for somebody’s reprisals,” Sánchez said of Iran.

The shift in tone is particularly notable in the U.K. Since Trump’s re-election, Starmer has bent over backward to forge a close relationship, including organizing invitations to stay with King Charles, and entertaining the president at the prime minister’s country retreat. British officials have toiled behind the scenes to lobby the Trump administration on Ukraine and Greenland.

But the Iran war marks the first time in recent memory when the U.K. hasn’t automatically backed its most important ally. Britain has long pitched itself as the U.S.’s most reliable military partner, and it sent combat troops to most major U.S. missions in recent decades.

“This is the first time that we have said ‘we don’t agree with your assessment of the security risk and we won’t stand shoulder to shoulder with you,’” says Sophia Gaston, a foreign-policy expert at King’s College London. The ramification of this could be far reaching, she says, given how reliant the U.K. is on the U.S. for both security and trade.

The different approaches may reflect competing interests. On the one hand, European governments may have more to gain by staying on Trump’s good side and trying to have influence over Washington, said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe for Eurasia, a risk-analysis firm.

“Europe’s influence and agency is going to be limited, so in those circumstances be constructive and be tactical,” he said.

One goal for Europe will be pushing the U.S. to end the conflict sooner rather than later, he said. A prolonged conflict could hurt Europe badly; its weak economies are particularly vulnerable to sustained spikes in energy prices, and it could suffer from any new waves of terror or migration from the Middle East. It sits a lot closer than the U.S.

On Monday, President Trump lashed out at Spain, saying that the U.S. would end trade with the European country after it said it wouldn’t allow the U.S. access to its bases as part of the Iran strikes. Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Merz’s approach is firmly in the pragmatic camp. Ever since World War II, Germany has been one of the biggest advocates of the international rules-based order. But the realization is sinking in—after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the U.S. intervention in Venezuela and the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran—that the world’s major powers aren’t going to be constrained by international law. Merz’s message is that Germany has to take the world as it finds it, not as it wishes it to be, and look after its own interests.

But some European leaders will have other interests at play—including their own voters. Starmer, for one, is coming under increasing pressure from his leftist Labour Party, which has sunk in the polls as voters turn toward the populist Green Party, which is pro-Palestinian and wants to abolish NATO.

Trump is a deeply unpopular figure in Europe, and the war is also likely to prove unpopular. A poll by YouGov showed that 49% of Brits are against attacking Iran, while 28% support the strikes. The longer the conflict drags on, the more unpopular it is likely to become.

Starmer cannot escape the ghosts of the 2003 Iraq war, when then Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair backed U.S. assertions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and sent tens of thousands of British troops to take part in the invasion and long occupation—a move widely seen as having tarnished his legacy.

Having faced a string of scandals, a weak economy and tanking popularity, Starmer’s hold on power depends on his Labour backbenchers in Parliament. “He is totally beholden to the base, and they are totally opposed to giving the U.S. carte blanche,” Rahman said.

There has been some hand-wringing in Britain over whether the “special relationship” between the U.S. and U.K. is now moribund.

On Wednesday, Starmer suggested the relationship would outlast Trump, saying it was defined by military and intelligence sharing rather than Trump’s pronouncements to the media. “Hanging on to President Trump’s latest words is not the special relationship in action,” he told lawmakers.