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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/73560376
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is a particularly revealing example. When Israel attacked Iran in June 2025, he praised it for doing the West’s “dirty work.” He defended the much larger American-Israeli bombing campaign launched in February 2026, declaring that this was “no time to lecture our allies on international law.”
Now Merz laments that the war has cost Europe more than €100 billion through higher energy prices. The “dirty work” has come with a hefty bill.
The European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who spoke of a “democratic transition” in Tehran as the U.S. and Israeli bombs began falling, now places the war’s price tag at €127 billion ($143 billion) in additional fossil fuels. Neither Merz nor von der Leyen are on the record of connecting publicly the outcome of the elections to the war on Iran, however.
Merz and von der Leyen epitomize a broader European failure. EU governments had little meaningful influence over Washington’s decision to go to war. Nevertheless, some, like Germany, supported it. Others, like France, acknowledged that the war violated international law, but put emphasis on Iran’s “destabilizing behaviour” in the region. Still others, like Italy, Portugal, Bulgaria, and Cyprus cooperated by allowing the U.S. to use military bases on their territories to attack Iran. Spain’s Pedro Sánchez was a notable exception, fully opposing the war from the outset.
Do you mean to legitimize nuking them preemptively? Or what would be the purpose of that?
No I am pointing out the Iran War was from the beginning going to be a disaster for Europe since the clear objective was to bomb Iran into escalating its retaliation so the US and Israel could then leverage that for domestic/internal power.
Also Trump needed an excuse not to give Ukraine any significant amount of ballistic missile interceptors and help retain his daddy’s (Putin) power, and the Iran War was the perfect conduit for Trump and Vance to launch every interceptor they could get their hands on as wastefully as possible.
I don’t think you need the Ukraine situation to derive the reasons for Trump bombing Iran. Israel has material reason to want to turn Iran into its puppet state or a failed state. That allows it to take more adjacent territory and/or resources without resistance. Trump entered the war because he’s paid handsomely by pro-Israel interests to do Israel’s bidding, and Mossad likely also has dirt on him. I think that is enough to explain what happened. Especially given the enormous military base damage sustained by the US. They didn’t have to take any of that to cut off air defences from Ukraine.
I mean, I have no idea I am just a rando with very limited information, but at the very least I would say being able to fire off all the ballistic missile interceptors was an attractive feature of the Iran War for Trump because it made being pressured into giving/selling more to Ukraine a non-issue.
Everybody new that before the attack, everybody apparently except Trump and Netanyahu.
Yes I suspect that was part of it all along, and also to increase oil prices to help Putin. It’s all absolutely disgusting.
There is no credible evidence Iran was not following the JCPOA, especially along terms of military escalation. How then must we evaluate the launching of the Iran War by the US and Israel? It leaves little room to even plausibly propose a hypothetical framing where the US and Israel haven’t acted DIRECTLY against european and global interests in launching the Iran War.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_nuclear_deal
The only one who broke that agreement was USA. Nothing new in that. The way USA has acted towards Iran for more than 50 years is disgusting.
Well Israel too but yeah same system.
The thing people here in US ignore on both sides of the “establishment media” is that from Iran’s perspective both “teams” in the US had a chance to rectify things… and NEITHER did.
Absolutely. 🤮
Exactly Joe Biden did NOTHING to amend anything with Iran. So since the agreement was broken by USA, they were kind of given a pass to continue their nuclear program. They could probably have had nukes too now, if it wasn’t for the fact that the Ayatollah found that is was contrary to Islam to have them.
It’s also worth noticing that even Obama who was very popular around the world, was also a war criminal! And considered it OK to not consider basic civil rights for foreigners. Claiming that if you are not American, you have no rights in the eyes of American services.