Division in Europe over US attacks on Iran risks backfiring

Spain says the US and Israel have violated international law, while Germany says it is not time to teach its allies lessons. Even legal experts are divided. Critics warn that reluctance to report illegal conduct can have negative consequences.

The streets of Europe were filled with celebrating Iranian diaspora this weekend, following the joint US-Israeli attacks that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“The dictator is dead. This is the best day of my life,” one man told DW as he danced through the cobblestone streets of Brussels.

Across town, European Union authorities are no less critical of the Iranian regime. They imposed a series of sanctions on Tehran for human rights violations and harshly rebuked recent retaliatory attacks against Gulf countries.

But now they are faced with a diplomatic dilemma already known.

Joint US-Israeli attacks were on compliance with international law What about the rules-based international order of which the EU so often claims to be a defender? EU spokespeople spent much of Monday’s press conference evading this question posed by journalists.

“No stupid rules of engagement”

President Donald Trump said on Monday that the US was “ensuring that the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world will never obtain a nuclear weapon” and working to destroy Iran’s missile capabilities.

But his government has made no attempt to justify its attacks through international structures. In fact, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the US was acting “regardless of what so-called international institutions say” — without “stupid rules of engagement.”

He criticized the “traditional allies” of the USA who “have lament and scandalizehesitating about the use of force.”

This is a message that will have very different receptions in a divided European Union.

Germany and Spain adopt different tones on attacks in Iran

Let’s look at the case of Germany, where Foreign Minister Friedrich Merz has avoided criticizing Washington.

“Legal assessments under international law will achieve relatively little” when it comes to promoting political change in Iran, he told journalists on Sunday.

“Now This is not the time to teach lessons to our partners and allies. Despite our reservations, we share many of their goals,” Merz added.

In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez adopts a different tone.

“We reject unilateral military action by the United States and Israel, which represents an escalation and contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order“, he wrote on Saturday.

This Wednesday, after Trump announced the cut of trade relations with Spain due to its refusal to let American troops use the military bases in Morón and Rota, Sánchez was even more incisiverefusing to give in “simply for fear of reprisals”.

“It is naive to believe that democracies and respect between nations spring from ruins or to think that practice blind and servile following It’s a way of leading. We will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world and contrary to our interests”, said the Spanish Prime Minister, who also recalled other bad examples of conflicts in the Middle East in which Europe followed American leadership. “You cannot respond to one illegality with another. This is how the greatest disasters in history begin. We must learn from History“.

In addition to Sánchez, . In an interview with The Sun, the American head of state accused the British prime minister of being hostage of Muslim voters and having put the “historical relationship” between the two countries at risk with its delay in authorizing the use of British bases.

“I never thought I’d see this coming from the UK. We love the UK. But it’s a very different kind of relationship than we had with your country before,” said Trump, who drew a contrast between Starmer and the “great” support he has received from Germany and France.

Merz’s silence is part of a strategy of never contradict Trump before the cameras and try, in private conversations, to persuade the president to see things from the German point of view.

But his approach is laying bare the gap in responses from European allies, and even legal experts are not united either.

What does international law say?

For Marc Weller, professor at the University of Cambridge and director of the international law program at the think tank Chatham House, the answer is clear.

“There is no legal justification available for the current ongoing attack on Iran,” he said on Sunday.

“International law does not allow the use of force in response to a generalized hostile stance by another State, except in cases of armed attack,” Weller wrote in an analysis article.

“The use of force also is not permitted as a form of retaliation armed in response to past provocations. Force is only permitted as a last resort, when there are no other means available to protect a State from an armed attack,” he stated.

Weller said it is debatable whether the use of military force to save a population from their own government is legal, but said the Iranian regime’s brutal crackdown on protesters last month “probably hasn’t reached the threshold yet” to justify foreign intervention.

“Law does not operate in isolation”

Rosa Freedman, professor of Law, Conflict and Global Development at the University of Reading, disagrees.

“As a lawyer, you need to analyze this within a broader context. Law does not operate in isolation“, he told DW on Monday.

“Iran has been a threat, not just to Israel, but to the entire region for decades under this regime. And they have been very clear about the threats they pose and their ambitions to possess and use nuclear weapons“, he stated.

Freedman said reading legal texts in isolation could spark debates about legality.

“But if we look at this within the context of the purpose of this law and the purpose of the United Nations,” he added, “it is very clear that these attacks [EUA-Israelitas] in the context of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons they are completely legal“.

Do US-Israeli airstrikes set a dangerous precedent?

The fact is that this debate will remain largely restricted to legal books — because will not be taken to court.

The UN Security Council may impose sanctions or no-fly zones in cases of conflict, but Freedman said the US can veto any action against it or its allies — just as Russia prevented action against its war in Ukraine.

In short: “The more powerful states have more capacity to do what they want.”

Marc Weller, from Chatham House, says this is exactly why governments must be more incisive.

“This reluctance to highlight illegal conduct may encourage a broader perception that the use of force as a means of national policy is becoming acceptable again“, these.

And for Europe, this can have negative consequences.

“It will not be easy to oppose further Russian aggression or potential Chinese expansionism if there are no clear principles on which to basewithout generating objections of double standards and hypocrisy”, said Weller.