would attack European \u201ctargets\u201d<\/a> helping the US-Israeli attack.<\/p>\nIt also fired a second missile at Turkey on Monday, which was shot down by Nato air-defences, risking drawing Nato assets in the region into Iran\u2019s crosshairs too.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Iran does strike Europe, US bases like Souda Bay in Crete might be the preferred targets,\u201d said former Nato official Jamie Shea.<\/p>\n
\u201cIran has to play psychological warfare as best it can and it is not surprising that it is trying to intimidate European governments \u2026 [but] why would Iran want to bring European strike capabilities down upon its head?,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
But Shea, who now teaches war studies at Exeter University in the UK, added that EU countries also had to tread a fine line to avoid actions seen by Iran as \u201caggressive and as crossing a line. For instance, if European warships escort oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz or shoot down Iranian drones over the UAE\u201d.<\/p>\n
For his part, Macron pledged two frigates to the fledgling Hormuz mission, which is \u201cto be prepared with European and non-European states\u201d.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, \u201cthe [French] aircraft-carrier Charles de Gaulle [strike group] is now near Cyprus,\u201d the French president added.<\/p>\n
The total French fleet in the region will count \u201ceight frigates, two amphibious helicopter carriers, and our aircraft carrier\u201d, he said, as well as five frigates from Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, as well as a British destroyer.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis naval mobilisation is unprecedented\u201d, Macron said.<\/p>\n
Hormuz aside, the new eastern Mediterranean fleet\u2019s main task was to protect Cyprus from Iranian missiles and drones, after a UK military base there was hit by a drone last week.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Cyprus is attacked, it is Europe that is attacked,\u201d said Macron, alluding to an EU treaty mutual-defence pledge that echoes the Nato\u2019s Article V clause.<\/p>\n
Op\u00e9ration Baliste 2.0?<\/p>\n
But French ships might also be needed to evacuate tens of thousands of Europeans from Lebanon, as they were in Op\u00e9ration Baliste in the 2006 Lebanon war, when French forces used helicopters and boats to ferry people from Lebanon to Cyprus, before flying them home.<\/p>\n
Israel attacked Lebanon after the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia there fired rockets.<\/p>\n
But the scale of Israel\u2019s assault is causing concern among 13 Middle East states\u2019 leaders and foreign ministers, who spoke with EU Council president Ant\u00f3nio Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen by video-link on Monday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey underscored the need for the protection of civilians, and the respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon,\u201d in an EU readout, after Israel killed almost 400 people there, including 83 children, according to the UN.<\/p>\n
An EU Commission spokesman also told press in Brussels: \u201cWe \u2026 call on Israel to cease its ground operations violating Lebanon\u2019s sovereignty and territorial integrity\u201d.<\/p>\n
He described the Middle East as an \u201cactive war theatre \u2026 a volatile environment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Speaking at an EU ambassadors\u2019 conference in Brussels on Monday, von der Leyen said the Iran and Ukraine wars showed the EU should have a less values-driven and \u201cmore realistic and interest-oriented foreign policy.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn all our assets and policies, we must mainstream security considerations. In fact, security must become the organising principle of our action. This must be the default mindset \u2014 from defence to data, from industry to infrastructure, from tech to trade,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Kallas eclipsed<\/p>\n
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas said: \u201cThis morning, the first of two flights fully-financed by the EU evacuated citizens from the region [Middle East].\u201d<\/p>\n
She urged EU ambassadors that \u201cwe need to communicate with verve, with style, in a way that touches the hearts of your host country nationals and officials alike. Use our considerable soft power, tell the European story\u201d.<\/p>\n
Von der Leyen has de facto taken over as EU foreign policy chief from Kallas in crisis diplomacy.<\/p>\n
But French foreign minister Jean-No\u00ebl Barrot, who also addressed the EU envoys\u2019 meeting on Monday, said: \u201cThe commission must strive for the strictest respect of subsidiarity \u2026 The high representative [Kallas] conducts the common foreign and security policy of the union\u201d.<\/p>\n
Subsidiarity is an EU legal principle of delegating power to lower organs.<\/p>\n
Barrot warned that the US was seeking \u201crapprochement with Russia in the hope of detaching Moscow from Beijing\u201d in its geopolitical rivalry with China.<\/p>\n
He pushed back against White House claims there was \u201ccivilisational erasure\u201d in Europe, saying \u201cwe live better in Europe than in the US or in China\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cMay Europe hold firm and know how to say no. No to the United States, when it takes on its most intimate democracy or territorial integrity,\u201d he added, referring to a White House pledge to help EU far-right parties and its threat to annex Greenland from Denmark.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"France is to lead an EU mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as Europe also urges Israel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11446,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[2756,102,2762,6488,6486,2760,101,6487,2761],"class_list":{"0":"post-11445","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-strait-of-hormuz","8":"tag-typedefinedterm","9":"tag-hormuz","10":"tag-identifier4293","11":"tag-identifier4481","12":"tag-namefrance","13":"tag-nameiran","14":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","15":"tag-termcodefrance","16":"tag-termcodeiran"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11445"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11445\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}