WASHINGTON — A decade ago, Israel’s government and the three major powers in Europe were diametrically opposed to Israel on how best to stop Iran from going nuclear. Britain, France and Germany all favored the Iran nuclear deal; Israel did its best to keep it from happening.
Now, the European governments and Israel are — with minor tonal differences — on the same page. The leaders of all three European countries have said Israel’s right to self-defense and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon are paramount.
This is especially remarkable because leaders of all three countries have been sharply critical of Israel for its conduct of the war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Foreign policy experts attribute the comity on Iran to Europe’s alarm over the recent report by UN experts that Iran is closer than ever to nuclear weapons breakout.
Another factor is Iran’s alliance with Russia in its war against Ukraine.
Dov Zakheim, an undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration, says that the UN report that Iran has violated the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty for 20 years was a game changer.
“These three countries are totally committed to the NPT, and so their concern is, if the Iranians are violating the NPT — whether it’s within a month, six months, six weeks, six days — the Iranians are going to forge ahead and come up with a nuclear weapon,” says Zakheim.
“It’s not just that the weapon is a threat to Israel. It’s a threat to the rest of the Middle East.”
Halie Soifer, a national security adviser to former Vice President Kamala Harris when she was a California senator, notes that after the May 31 IAEA “revealed in the report that Iran was noncompliant, and had failed to disclose its enrichment, it was those three European countries that took the lead in introducing a resolution about it.”
The resolution, she said, “calls upon Iran to urgently remedy its non-compliance.”
The IAEA report appeared to be very much front of mind for all three leaders in their comments after Israel launched what it said was a preemptive attack.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on June 13:
“Iran bears a very heavy responsibility for the destabilization of the region.
“Iran is continuing to enrich uranium without any civilian justification and to levels that are very close to what is needed for a nuclear device.”
Keir Starmer, the British prime minister said June 14 that he sent combat and support aircraft to the region.
The decision, he said, came after what he described as a “good and constructive” conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “that included discussions about the safety and security of Israel, as you would expect, between two allies.”
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also spoke with Netanyahu.
“Israel has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens,” he said June 15 in a social media post.
“Iran’s nuclear weapons program is an existential threat to the State of Israel.”
On June 17 he went further, saying in an interview on German broadcaster ZDF that “this is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us.”
All three leaders says that the G7 leading industrial nations —and above all the Trump administration — commit to a united front of supporting Israel while calling for deescalation.
The tone from the European leaders was markedly different from the harsh criticisms and threatened actions against Israel from the same leaders in recent weeks.
Germany announced that it is considering the ban of the sale of some weapons to Israel, which would be unprecedented for the country that has traditionally been Israel’s strongest supporter in Europe.
Britain suspended its free trade negotiations with Israel and sanctioned two ministers.
Also notable was the difference in tone from a decade ago, when the then-leaders of all three countries robustly backed the nuclear deal brokered then by the Obama administration — a deal that Netanyahu did his best to scuttle.
“We are confident that the agreement provides the foundation for resolving the conflict on Iran’s nuclear program permanently,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President Francois Hollande and British Prime Minister David Cameron said in a Washington Post op-ed they coauthored at the time.
By contrast, Ron Dermer, then Netanyahu’s envoy to Washington and now one of his closest advisers, said on the same page that the deal “makes things much worse, increasing the chances of conventional war with Iran and its terror proxies.”
In 2018, Trump at Netanyahu’s behest exited the deal and imposed tough sanctions on Iran. Neither approach stopped Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapons.
Said Ilan Goldenberg, who held senior Iran-related positions in the Obama administration state and defense departments:
“Our European allies probably feel, ‘This is not what we wanted, but now that we’re here, we’ll certainly be happier if it ends in a way where Iran’s program is set back as much as possible.’”
Another factor in Europe’s wariness of Iran is its regime’s long history — from its inception in 1979 — of deploying assassins and terrorists to Germany, France and other countries to eliminate its dissidents and enemies.
“We are preparing for Iran to target Israeli or Jewish targets in Germany,” Merz said in his statement.
Also at play is Iran’s alliance with and tactical assistance to Russia as its war against Ukraine drags on.
Dov Zakheim said recent threats by acolytes of Russian President Vladimir Putin to go nuclear have deeply unsettled Europe.
“All his henchmen keep talking about using nuclear weapons, which really terrifies Western Europe and the big Western European countries,” he said.
Laura Blumenfeld, a senior fellow at the Phillip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, says that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “is Putin’s arms dealer, a reliable supplier of drones.
“And Israel is blowing up his business.”
