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The United States and Israel are doing the heavy lifting. On February 28, joint American-Israeli strikes—Operation Epic Fury and Operation Roaring Lion—eliminated Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Iran’s defense minister, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.
American service members and Israeli pilots are in harm’s way at this very moment, absorbing retaliatory strikes so that the free world does not have to live under the shadow of a nuclear-armed theocracy. And what has Europe offered? Ursula von der Leyen called the situation “greatly concerning.” Emmanuel Macron warned of an “outbreak of war.” France, Germany and the United Kingdom rushed to clarify that their forces did not participate.
The collective message from the continent was not solidarity but distance. If the transatlantic alliance cannot count on Europe for even full-throated public support while Americans and Israelis bear the costs and the risks, then what, exactly, is the alliance for?
I write from experience. As the United States ambassador to the European Union, I was charged with urging our allies to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and join America’s maximum-pressure campaign.
What I encountered in Brussels was willful denial. European officials performed extraordinary contortions to avoid acknowledging what the intelligence made plain: Iran had already violated the deal. Federica Mogherini, the EU’s then-High Representative, was simply uninterested in any evidence that contradicted her narrative. And the creation of INSTEX—a financial vehicle designed to circumvent American sanctions and keep European trade with Iran flowing—was a breathtaking display of misplaced priorities.
At a moment when the democratic world should have been tightening the vice, Europe was engineering workarounds to do business with the mullahs. Iran took note and then systematically violated every enrichment limit the JCPOA imposed, reaching 60% purity—a short technical step from weapons-grade material. Europe’s fidelity to the JCPOA did not restrain Iran. It enabled Iran.
IRAN DIDN’T ADAPT TO AMERICA’S PLAYBOOK. RUSSIA AND CHINA ALREADY HAVE
What makes Europe’s sideline posture not merely disappointing but absurd is that Iran has been attacking Europe for years.
In 2018, an Iranian diplomat operating out of the Vienna embassy was convicted in Belgium for masterminding a plot to bomb a rally of Iranian dissidents near Paris—a gathering of tens of thousands, including a sitting British MP who said that, had the plot succeeded, it would have been the deadliest terror operation ever carried out on European soil.
In London, a journalist with Iran International was stabbed near his home by assailants linked to Tehran. MI5’s director general disclosed that British security services tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in a single year.
Dutch intelligence linked Tehran to assassination attempts in the Netherlands. German and French authorities exposed Iranian agents hiring European criminals to surveil Jewish targets in Paris, Munich and Berlin.
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Iran has not merely threatened Europe in the abstract. It has deployed operatives, recruited criminal proxies and attempted mass-casualty attacks on European soil. And still, Europe equivocates.
The regime in Tehran chose this path. It enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels. It armed and directed Hamas in the barbaric Oct. 7 attack. It unleashed the Houthis on international shipping. And when its own people rose up in the largest protests since the 1979 revolution, the regime slaughtered thousands of unarmed civilians on Khamenei’s direct orders—the largest street massacres in modern Iranian history.
Even as Oman’s foreign minister announced a supposed breakthrough in nuclear talks two days before the strikes, Iran was tripling its oil exports to sanction-proof its economy. The diplomatic runway was exhausted.
Now Khamenei is dead. The IRGC’s senior leadership has been eliminated. Ali Larijani’s hastily announced temporary leadership council is a sign of desperation, not stability. The regime’s retaliatory strikes demonstrate that even a mortally wounded theocracy remains dangerous—which is precisely why the pressure must not relent.
The United States and Israel must sustain operations until Iran’s nuclear infrastructure, ballistic missile capability and capacity to wage proxy war are permanently degraded and until whatever authority emerges in Tehran understands that reconstituting these programs means annihilation.
No one is asking Europe to fire a single shot. The United States and Israel have assumed that burden. But the least—the very least—that our closest allies can do is offer unequivocal public support. Not mealy-mouthed calls for “maximum restraint.” Not frantic clarifications of nonparticipation. Not Macron calling for an emergency Security Council session as though the problem is the response to 40 years of Iranian aggression rather than the aggression itself.
Europe must publicly back the campaign to dismantle the regime’s military capabilities, enforce the full scope of sanctions with no carve-outs and tell the Iranian people that the democracies of the world stand with them—not with the apparatus that has butchered them.
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There is a broader dimension European leaders would be wise to consider. No one is watching more carefully than Beijing. China has deepened ties with Tehran, purchasing discounted oil in defiance of sanctions.
If Europe sits on the sidelines while America and Israel shoulder the burden alone, China will conclude that the Western alliance lacks the cohesion to confront determined adversaries—a conclusion that will inform Beijing’s calculations on Taiwan and beyond.
A unified front sends the opposite message: The democratic world will not be divided, and the cost of backing rogue regimes is real and escalating.
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The window for capitulation is open now, and it will not stay open forever. The United States and Israel have demonstrated the resolve to act and are paying the price in treasure, risk and blood. Europe owes it to its allies, to the Iranian people and to its own stated values to stand beside them—publicly, unequivocally and with no daylight in between.
Now is the time to prove it.
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