Trump has put Europe's leaders in a double bind over Iran

European politicians risk angering their voters if they join America’s war. Yet they could also face domestic upheaval if they take no action to reopen shipping routes that Iran has blocked and ease an energy crisis.

President Donald Trump, in his latest broadside at Europe, castigated its leaders for refusing to help keep open the Strait of Hormuz. “They complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay,” he said on social media last week, but they reject “a simple military manoeuvre that is the single reason for the high oil prices.”

However impulsive his outburst, it pointed up a deeper truth: Donald Trump has put Europe’s leaders into a kind of double bind.

Iran’s de facto closure of the strategic waterway has set off a full-blown energy crisis across the continent. With skyrocketing oil and gas prices angering voters throughout Europe, the pressure is mounting on its leaders to take more forceful actions to reopen the shipping lanes.

Yet at the same time, Europe’s political winds are blowing ever more fiercely against the war, raising the stakes for leaders to take part. The military campaign is faulted by many Europeans, especially on the left, who say it is gratuitous, illegal and now is threatening Europe’s fragile growth. The leaders also remain haunted by the Iraq War, which Britain supported, to its lasting regret.

“We are divided as usual,” said Gérard Araud, a former French ambassador to Israel and the United States. “Europeans are showing their weakness on several levels. We are in a state of total shock about what is happening.”

Already, the war is tilting politics. In Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni lost a referendum to overhaul the judicial system that leaves her politically damaged. The perception that she is close to Trump, who is deeply unpopular in Italy, did not help, especially when he did not bother to call her before the war.

In France, a far-left party opposed to Mideast intervention, France Unbowed, scored gains in mayoral elections last week. That came despite the party getting caught up in controversies, including the arrest of two party aides after the killing of a right-wing activist. Analysts said the party benefited from the votes of Muslims who are angry about the war.

Still, for all the political hazards, there are compelling reasons for Europe to ensure the Strait of Hormuz is not blocked for a prolonged period. In Germany, gasoline has topped 2 euros per litre, the equivalent of $9.48 per gallon. That has forced Germany and other countries into costly tax cuts and price caps to cushion the shock.

“The Europeans have every interest in opening the strait to tanker and other trade, and in showing the smaller Gulf states that they are reliable allies,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to France and the United States. “So, once satisfied that they are acting defensively rather offensively, those who can are looking for ways to help.”

For all Trump’s pressure on Europe, he has not made it easy for its leaders to support him. The United States did not consult allies on the joint US-Israeli operation or, in most cases, even give them a heads-up. The lack of collaboration came after a fraught period in which Trump escalated his threats of a takeover of Greenland and zigzagged in his support for Ukraine.

Trump has since been insulting to European leaders, particularly Prime Minister Keir Starmer of Britain, who worked assiduously to cultivate him. Starmer is “no Winston Churchill,” he said, before circulating a mocking British TV sketch of the prime minister quaking before a phone call with the president.

R Nicholas Burns, who served as US ambassador to NATO during the Iraq War, said “the scurrilous comments that Trump made about the British prime minister” were the latest in a series of hostile gestures that would make it politically untenable for European leaders to take part in offensive military operations.

“All of that has contributed to the political problems that European countries have, and they’re all democracies,” Burns said.

Even when he appealed to the Europeans to step up, Trump managed to disparage them. The United States, he said, did not actually need their military assets. Diplomats and military officials say that laid bare his real motive: to force Europe to assume the political risk of joining the military campaign.

While analysts note that Europe could contribute to a military operation in the strait — deploying minesweepers, for example, or other warships to escort tankers — they say that Europe’s military assets are secondary to the value of having its political buy-in for the broader campaign.

“There are realities where it would be convenient to have more ships,” said Michel Yakovleff, a retired French general and former NATO planner. “But that’s not the Trump line. If Trump were open to saying, ‘Quite frankly, given the magnitude of the problem, we’d like to have more,’ then the calculation could be different.”

But since Trump dismissed the value of Europe’s military contribution, Yakovleff said, “that means it’s political.”

He said European leaders were right not to give Trump political cover because he has yet to clarify his strategic objectives or lay out an exit ramp for the war. On Monday, the president said “very good” talks were underway to end hostilities, a contention quickly disputed by Iranian officials.

To put together a coalition for the strait, Yakovleff said, Trump would need to hammer out an agreement with members on the scope of the operation, what each would contribute, the chain of command and rules of engagement. Such a process would take at least two months, he said.

Last week, leaders from Europe, joined by several from Asia and the Persian Gulf, dropped their resistance to taking part in such an operation. But their statement was hardly full-throated: “We express our readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait,” it said.

President Emmanuel Macron of France is working behind the scenes to obtain the imprimatur of the United Nations for a post-conflict operation to keep
the strait open. European Union officials have raised the idea of expanding the mandate of other naval protection missions in the region.

Given Europe’s history of negotiating with Iran on its nuclear programme, said Araud, it could play a more meaningful role diplomatically in helping wind down the conflict.

But he said Europe was hamstrung by three interlocking factors: Trump’s distrust of Europe, especially after its refusal to support the war; Europe’s fears that antagonizing the president could lead him to punish Ukraine; and Iran’s suspicion of Europe, given its reluctance to confront him more openly.

“We could play the role of go-between, but Trump would rather have the Pakistanis,” Araud said, adding that “the Iranians don’t trust us either; they think we are in the pocket of the Americans.”