Many European leaders are walking a fine line between expressing limited support for U.S. military action against Iran and warning of regional conflagration.
Not Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. He has been an outspoken critic of U.S. airstrikes, sparking anger and threats from the White House. But rather than back down, Sánchez and his government doubled down.
Spain has important trade and investment relationships with the United States and NATO members. Four million Americans visited this country last year. And just this month, Amazon announced it would expand its investment in Spanish data centers to a total of nearly $40 billion.
The United States also has major military facilities in Rota and Moron in southern Spain. It was the use of these bases that sparked the recent conflict, and the Spanish government has banned their use to support attacks on Iran.
President Trump made angry comments during a press conference on Tuesday, threatening to cut off trade with Spain. Furthermore, he added: “We can use their bases if we want, or we can fly out and use them. No one will tell us not to use them.”
Sanchez did just that. Within 24 hours of Trump’s rant, he appeared on national television with a simple message: “No to war.”
He called the U.S. and Israeli attacks “reckless and illegal” and said his country “will not participate in something that is bad for the world and against our values and interests just because we fear retaliation from someone else.”
Sanchez accused the United States of playing “Russian roulette with the fate of millions.”
But he went further, implicitly criticizing President Trump by arguing that leaders have an obligation to improve the lives of their people. “It is absolutely unacceptable that leaders who are incapable of fulfilling their duties use the smoke of war to hide their failures and line the pockets of a few in the process,” he said.
The White House claimed that trade threats forced Spain to agree to cooperate with the U.S. military, but that claim was quickly denied.
“Madrid’s position regarding the war in the Middle East and the bombing of Iran and the use of our bases has not changed at all,” Foreign Minister José Manuel Álvarez said.
President Trump’s threat against Spain during his meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz at the White House, while Merz watched in silence, itself eloquently proves Europe’s further dilemma in dealing with President Trump.
Over the past year, many European leaders have tried to placate President Trump with a combination of flattery and conciliarity, occasionally drawing red lines, such as over American designs in the Danish territory of Greenland.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte told President Trump: “Sometimes Dad has to use strong words.”
This time, the issue is whether Europe will allow bases on its territory to support U.S. attacks.
President Trump praised the cooperative attitude of Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni of Germany and Italy. “I love Italy. I think she’s a great leader,” he told an Italian newspaper on Saturday.
Not as good as Keir Starmer in the UK.
Britain initially rejected a US request to use British bases to bomb Iran, but Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Britain would allow the US to use the bases for “defensive operations”.
For President Trump, this concession was not a good thing.
“We’re not dealing with Winston Churchill,” Trump said of Starmer. And on Saturday, in response to news that Britain would send an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, President Trump posted on social media: “We don’t need people going to war after we’ve already won!”
Mr. Sanchez, by contrast, has been at least consistent, consistently provoking Mr. Trump on multiple issues, including Greenland, relations with China, and defense spending.
“I don’t know what’s going on in Spain,” Trump said in January, after President Sanchez refused to raise defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035, in line with commitments from other NATO members.
“Since I became prime minister, Spain has tripled its defense spending,” Sánchez countered.
For Mr. Sánchez, a spat with Mr. Trump may be risky, but it may also be smart politics to shore up center-left support for his fragile coalition.
Paco Camas García of the public research firm Ipsos wrote on X that Sánchez is “using foreign policy to try to regain political control at home,” adding that “on the international stage Sánchez could project a sense of leadership and strategic clarity” that would put the conservative Popular Party in a “particularly difficult bind.”
Camas García said Trump’s approval rating in Spain is at an all-time low, at just 16% according to one poll conducted in February, and that if opposition parties “severely criticize Sánchez’s stance, they risk appearing to be siding with the president of the United States, which their own base largely rejects.”
As Chatham House pointed out this week, Mr. Sanchez is well aware that the Socialist Party’s opposition to the Iraq war “was central to its 2004 election victory.” In fact, Sanchez compares the current U.S. operation to the Iraq War.
Economically, President Trump’s threat to Spain, Europe’s fourth-largest economy, may not be as serious as it seems. Although Spain is one of Europe’s most vibrant economies, its trade with the United States is only about 5%. The European Union would have an obligation to defend member states accused of discrimination.
However, Spain relies on the United States for much of its liquefied natural gas supply.
There is another side to Sanchez’s hostility to American influence. For years, he and his family have been the target of abuse on social media and have slammed American tech companies for not doing enough to combat hate speech.
In January, Sánchez announced that Spain would ban social media for children under 16, saying: “Social media, which was supposed to bring unity, clarity and democracy, has instead brought division, vice and reactionary policies.”
Now in his eighth year as Spain’s prime minister, Sanchez no longer seems worried about confronting “Dad” or the broader MAGA movement.
