{"id":1401,"date":"2026-03-30T22:14:07","date_gmt":"2026-03-30T22:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/1401\/"},"modified":"2026-03-30T22:14:07","modified_gmt":"2026-03-30T22:14:07","slug":"europes-crisis-tourism-how-the-iran-war-swallowed-the-eus-geopolitical-agenda","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/1401\/","title":{"rendered":"Europe\u2019s crisis tourism: how the Iran war swallowed the EU\u2019s geopolitical agenda"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the days after the United States and Israel tipped the Middle East into a new and catastrophic crisis with their attacks on Iran<\/a>, European leaders were all over the map.<\/p>\n

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz both voiced support for regime change in Iran soon after the strikes started more than four weeks ago.<\/p>\n

Each of them also questioned the continued utility of the international rules-based order, while Merz\u2019s foreign minister Johann Wadephul even said international law \u201ccannot be invoked\u201d by a \u201cregime like Iran\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"GermanGerman Chancellor Friedrich Merz initially supported regime change in Iran. Photo: dpa<\/p>\n

In Spain, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez was quick out of the blocks to condemn the war as illegal.<\/p>\n

He refused US requests to refuel fighter jets on joint US-Spanish bases and used a televised national address to say \u201cno to war\u201d, following President Donald Trump\u2019s threat to cut off all trade with the Iberian nation.<\/p>\n

But Sanchez\u2019s was a lonely dissenting voice.<\/p>\n

As the situation spiralled, soaring energy prices and the prospect of a new wave of displaced migrants heading for Europe proved clarifying. This was not Europe\u2019s war but European countries would surely pay a price for it.<\/p>\n

Germany, France, Italy and others rejected Trump\u2019s demands to get involved, while fears quickly surfaced that another American foray into the Middle East would drain resources from Europe\u2019s primary foreign policy objective: supporting Ukraine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the days after the United States and Israel tipped the Middle East into a new and catastrophic…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1402,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1662,300,81,66,1659,39,4,15,256,1660,92,303,145,30,1661,28,45,63],"class_list":["post-1401","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-europe","tag-australian-parliament","tag-brussels","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-egmont-royal-institute-for-international-relations","tag-eu","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-european-commission","tag-european-council-on-foreign-relations","tag-germany","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-red-sea","tag-ukraine","tag-united-states","tag-ursula-von-der-leyen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1402"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}