White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said on Wednesday that Madrid’s position of refusing to allow the country’s military bases to be used in the ongoing Iran war had now changed.<\/p>\n
“With respect to Spain, I think they heard the president’s message yesterday loud and clear, and it’s my understanding, over the past several hours, they’ve agreed to cooperate with the U.S. military,” Leavitt told reporters. <\/p>\n
“The president expects all of our European allies, of course, to cooperate in this long sought-after mission, not just for the United States but also for Europe, to crush the rogue Iranian regime.” <\/p>\n
Spain swiftly and “categorically” rejected Leavitt’s assertion, however. <\/p>\n
“The Spanish government’s position on the war in the Middle East … and the use of our bases has not changed at all,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told private radio station Cadena Ser, according to Reuters.<\/p>\n
The chaotic messaging between two NATO allies comes shortly after U.S. President Donald Trump vowed to cut off all trade with Madrid<\/a>, calling Spain “terrible” and repeating his criticism of Spain’s defense spending<\/a>.<\/p>\n Spanish Prime Minister Pedro S\u00e1nchez responded on Wednesday by describing the sprawling Middle East crisis as a “disaster” and summarized his government’s position in just three words: “No to war.”<\/p>\n S\u00e1nchez has emerged as one of the European Union’s leading critics of U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran, having also been an outspoken critic of Israel’s war in Gaza.<\/p>\n Arancha Gonz\u00e1lez, former foreign minister of Spain, told CNBC on Thursday that Trump’s attacks on S\u00e1nchez were not the first time the U.S. president has criticized a European leader. <\/p>\n British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Denmark’s Mette Frederiksen have all previously been singled out by Trump. <\/p>\n “What do they all have in common? They have said ‘no’ or they have questioned motives by the U.S. president,” Gonz\u00e1lez said. She added that political leaders who stood firm were more likely to be in a better position over the long term. <\/p>\n ‘Lets keep calm’<\/p>\n Gonz\u00e1lez, who now serves as the Dean of the Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) at Sciences Po, also issued a warning to Washington over Trump’s threat to sever trade ties with Madrid.<\/p>\n “Let me say that it would be foolish of the U.S. to have a trade embargo on a country with which it has a trade surplus. The U.S. has a trade surplus with Spain. President Trump always complains about imbalanced trade relationships. Well, here is a great trade relationship where he is a winning,” Gonz\u00e1lez told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe<\/a>” on Thursday. <\/p>\n U.S. President Donald Trump takes questions from the media during a bilateral meeting with German Chancellor\u00a0Friedrich Merz in the Oval Office of the White House on March 03, 2026 in Washington, DC.<\/p>\n Win Mcnamee | Getty Images<\/p>\n Trump’s threat to punish Spain on trade is widely thought to be a challenging prospect to deliver on, given that the 27 EU nations negotiate trade agreements collectively. <\/p>\n “Spain does not have an autonomous trade policy. Spain’s trade policy is the European Union’s trade policy,” Gonz\u00e1lez said. “Let’s keep calm. Cool heads. This is not the first time that we have seen threats of this kind.” <\/p>\n Spain’s Ibex 35 index<\/a> was the top performer among Europe’s major bourses on Thursday morning, up around 1.2%. The pan-European Stoxx 600 index<\/a>, meanwhile, was last seen up 0.5%. <\/p>\n Stock Chart IconStock chart icon Spain’s Ibex 35 index over the last five days. <\/p>\n “I’m actually very positive on the fact that there has been solidarity with Spain. There has been clearly a united position that it is unacceptable to try to bully individual countries into specific political positions,” said Guntram Wolff, senior fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based economic think tank.<\/p>\n “The U.S. president can disagree with them, and you know also among Europeans we can disagree on substance, but what is not acceptable is that an individual European ally gets singled out and gets bulled,” Wolff told CNBC’s “Europe Early Edition” on Thursday.<\/p>\n “Europeans have learned the lessons and know that they need to stick together,” he added.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez gestures during a press conference at the Moncloa Palace in Madrid on December…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4746,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[3343,3344,135,648,38,159,563,34,3346,3170,161,3345,49,171,81,565,1218,3347,2431,445,51,560,562],"class_list":{"0":"post-4745","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-banco-bilbao-vizcaya-argentaria-sa","9":"tag-banco-santander-brasil-sa","10":"tag-business-news","11":"tag-defense","12":"tag-donald-trump","13":"tag-foreign-policy","14":"tag-general-dynamics-corp","15":"tag-iran","16":"tag-ishares-msci-eurozone-etf","17":"tag-ishares-msci-spain-etf","18":"tag-lockheed-martin-corp","19":"tag-madrid","20":"tag-middle-east","21":"tag-northrop-grumman-corp","22":"tag-politics","23":"tag-raytheon-technologies-corp","24":"tag-spain","25":"tag-state-street-spdr-euro-stoxx-50-etf","26":"tag-stoxx-600","27":"tag-trade","28":"tag-united-states","29":"tag-united-states-antimony-corp","30":"tag-vanguard-ftse-europe-index-fund-etf-shares"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116176217913891443","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4745","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=4745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4745\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"hide](\"https:\/\/static-redesign.cnbcfm.com\/dist\/a54b41835a8b60db28c2.svg\")
<\/p>\n