Going it alone
At the heart of that resistance in Europe is the lack of consultation with allies before the U.S. launched the war, confusion about American war aims, and Trump’s demands mixed with his rage and insults at allies.
“The fact that there is no full clarity on U.S. war aims and that there was little to no consultation before the war matter,” said a second senior European defense official. “For countries in the eastern flank, it is also a matter of ensuring their own territorial defense first,” the official added, referring to Russia as the dominant European security concern.
The closures of airspace and broader rejection of Trump’s war has not been formally discussed inside NATO, according to one senior alliance diplomat. But there are “clearly different views on this,” the diplomat said, acknowledging it was a “difficult time for transatlantic relations.”
“The general ‘not our war’ approach has of course also to do with the U.S. attitude toward Europe,” said Niclas Herbst, a German center-right lawmaker on the European Parliament’s Defense Committee. “And Europe is already busy handling Russia’s war against Ukraine … we surely can’t use more military problems.”
Sven Biscop, a political science professor and senior defense analyst at the Egmont Institute, said the tougher stance reflects Europe’s view that the Iran war is a “strategic folly” and the fact the “U.S. strategy is becoming … less and less clear.”
On Tuesday, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth refused to give a deadline for ending the war in Iran, telling reporters that Trump “said four to six weeks, six to eight weeks … it could be any particular number.”