\n Most European leaders have trodden a fine line between offering limited support for US military action against Iran<\/a> and warning of a regional conflagration.\n <\/p>\n \n Not Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez. He has been outspoken<\/a> in his criticism of US strikes, provoking anger and threats from the White House. But rather than back down, S\u00e1nchez and his government have doubled down.\n <\/p>\n \n Spain has significant trade and investment ties with the United States and a fellow member of NATO. Last year 4 million Americans visited the country. And just this month, Amazon said it would expand its investment in data centers in Spain to total nearly $40 billion.\n <\/p>\n \n The US also has major military facilities in southern Spain, at Rota and Mor\u00f3n. It\u2019s the employment of those bases that kicked off the latest spat, with the Spanish government forbidding their use in support of the Iran strikes.\n <\/p>\n \n In angry comments at a news conference Tuesday, Trump threatened to cut off trade with Spain. And he added: \u201cWe could use their base if we want, we could just fly in and use it, nobody\u2019s going to tell us not to use it.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n S\u00e1nchez did just that. Within 24 hours of Trump\u2019s tirade, he went on national television with a simple message: \u201cNo to war.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n He described the US and Israeli strikes as \u201creckless and illegal\u201d and said his country would \u201cnot be complicit in something that is bad for the world \u2013 and that is also contrary to our values and interests \u2013 simply out of fear of reprisals from someone.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n S\u00e1nchez accused the US of playing \u201cRussian roulette with the destiny of millions.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n But he went further, arguing that leaders had a duty to make people\u2019s lives better and taking an implicit dig at Trump. \u201cIt is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are incapable of fulfilling that duty use the smoke of war to hide their failures and, in the process, line the pockets of a few,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n When the White House said its trade threat had forced \u2060Spain to agree to cooperate with the US military, the claim was swiftly contradicted.\n <\/p>\n \n Foreign Minister Jos\u00e9 Manuel Albares said Madrid\u2019s position \u201con the war in the Middle East \u200cand the bombing of Iran, regarding the use of our bases, has not changed at all.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Trump made his threats against Spain during a meeting at the White House with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who looked on in silence \u2013 itself eloquent testimony to yet another dilemma for Europe in dealing with Trump.\n <\/p>\n \n Over the past year many European leaders have tried to assuage Trump with a combination of flattery and accommodation, while drawing occasional red lines, such as with the American designs on Greenland, an autonomous Danish territory.\n <\/p>\n \n NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said at one point of Trump: \u201cDaddy has to sometimes use strong language.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n This time round, it\u2019s about whether Europe will allow bases on its territory to be used in support of US strikes.\n <\/p>\n \n Trump praised Germany and Italy\u2019s Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni for being cooperative. He told an Italian newspaper Saturday: \u201cI love Italy, I think she is a great leader.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Not so much the United Kingdom\u2019s Keir Starmer.\n <\/p>\n \n The UK initially turned down Washington\u2019s request to use British bases to bomb Iran, before Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the UK would allow the US to use its bases for \u201cdefensive operations.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The concession didn\u2019t do him much good in Trump\u2019s eyes.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThis is not Winston Churchill that we\u2019re dealing with,\u201d Trump said of Starmer. And on Saturday, responding to news that the UK would send an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, Trump posted on social media: \u201cWe don\u2019t need people that join Wars after we\u2019ve already won!\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n S\u00e1nchez, by contrast, has at least been consistent, as well as a consistent irritant to Trump on multiple issues, including Greenland, relations with China and defense spending.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on with Spain; it seems they want to travel for free,\u201d Trump said in January after S\u00e1nchez refused to raise defense spending targets to 5% of GDP by 2035, in line with the pledges of other NATO members.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cSpain has tripled its defense spending since I became prime minister,\u201d S\u00e1nchez retorted.\n <\/p>\n \n For S\u00e1nchez, a spat with Trump may be risky, but it may also be smart politics, shoring up center-left support for his fragile coalition government.\n <\/p>\n \n S\u00e1nchez \u201cis using foreign policy to regain the political initiative at home,\u201d said Paco Camas Garc\u00eda, of public survey firm Ipsos, posting on X. \u201cThe international stage allows him to project a sense of leadership and strategic clarity,\u201d and it also puts the conservative Popular Party \u201cin a particularly difficult bind.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Camas Garc\u00eda notes<\/a> that Trump\u2019s popularity in Spain is at an all-time low \u2013 just 16% according to one survey conducted in February \u2013 and that if the opposition \u201charshly critique S\u00e1nchez\u2019s stance, they risk appearing to side with a US president whom their own base largely rejects.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n S\u00e1nchez is well aware that his Socialist party\u2019s opposition to the Iraq war \u201cwas central to its victory in the 2004 elections,\u201d as Chatham House<\/a> noted this week. Indeed, S\u00e1nchez has compared the current US campaign with the Iraq war.\n <\/p>\n \n Economically, Trump\u2019s threats to Spain \u2013 Europe\u2019s fourth largest economy \u2013 may not be as grievous as they sound. Spain is one of Europe\u2019s most vibrant economies, and only about 5% of Spain\u2019s trade is with the US. The European Union would be duty bound to defend any member singled out for discrimination.\n <\/p>\n \n But Spain is reliant on the US for much of its liquefied natural gas supply.\n <\/p>\n \n There is another dimension to Sanchez\u2019s hostility toward American influence. For years he and his family have been the targets of abuse on social media, and he has railed against US tech firms for not doing enough to combat hate speech.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cThe social media that was supposed to bring unity, clarity and democracy have instead given us division, vice and a reactionary agenda,\u201d S\u00e1nchez said in January, announcing that Spain would ban social media<\/a> for children under the age of 16.\n <\/p>\n \n Now in his eighth year as Spain\u2019s prime minister, S\u00e1nchez appears no longer to worry about confronting \u201cDaddy\u201d or the broader MAGA movement.\n <\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Most European leaders have trodden a fine line between offering limited support for US military action against Iran and warning of a regional conflagration. Not Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez. He has been outspoken in his criticism of US strikes, provoking anger and threats from the White House. But rather than back down, S\u00e1nchez and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23158,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23157","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/Most-European-leaders-have-tiptoed-around-Trumps-war-with-Iran.JPG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23157"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23159,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23157\/revisions\/23159"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Donald](\"https:\/\/www.jubi24.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/gettyimages-2240464120.jpg\")
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