How Does the Iran War Transform Europe and Transatlantic Relations?

T

he unilateral military intervention by the U.S. and Israel targeting Iran has not only shaken the security architecture of the Middle East but has also exposed the structural fault lines in the international system in all their starkness. This move, which goes beyond a mere conjunctural security crisis, is a strategic catalyst transforming the already deep-seated transatlantic alliance and the internal balance of Europe. This blatant projection of power by the U.S. is leading to the disintegration of the “normative power” discourse that Europe has championed for decades. Furthermore, it confirms the continent’s passive position in the new global power struggle, while clearly demonstrating that the search for “strategic autonomy” in Europe is no longer a debate about a vision but a geopolitical necessity.

The rapid transformation of transatlantic relations: From crisis to alignment

Until recently, transatlantic relations were experiencing one of the deepest cracks of the post-Cold War era. The increasingly diminished strategic priority given to Europe in the new U.S. National Security Strategy document, the openly expressed differences in vision at the Davos and Munich security summits, and especially Donald Trump’s pronouncements culminating in his rhetoric about annexing Greenland, had triggered a search in European capitals for a security architecture outside the American umbrella.

European decision-makers were trying to build a line of resistance against Washington’s unilateral impositions, centering on international law, the rules-based system, and institutional norms. They shaped their fundamental arguments in the face of crises on this normative basis, defending the liberal international order.

However, the war of the U.S. and Israel against Iran proved how fragile this line of resistance was. In a moment of systemic crisis, European capitals, unable to produce a new strategic solution, aligned themselves predominantly and rapidly behind the Trump administration. Although the discursive and structural reasons that recently distanced the continent from the U.S. have not disappeared, with the occurrence of U.S. and Israeli military intervention, Europe’s normative discourse gave way to a reflex of accepting geopolitical tutelage and a rising emphasis on autonomy.

Strategic fragmentation within Europe and the attitudes of the actors

Europe’s passive alignment in this process points to a deepening strategic fragmentation rather than a homogeneous bloc within the continent. The attitudes displayed by European actors during the crisis demonstrate that the European Union (EU) has failed to produce a common foreign policy understanding.

EU Institutional Governance and the Instrumentalization of Law: The European Commission and the European Parliament have refused to invoke international law in the face of the Iranian intervention. These institutions, ardent defenders of “rules-based order” in the Ukraine and Greenland crises , have avoided condemning the unilateral attack by the U.S. and Israel. Instead, they have shifted their rhetoric, directly targeting Tehran and adopting a position that supports and legitimizes the “regime change” agenda. This demonstrates that the EU has integrated its founding values, which it references in key crises, into the geopolitical vision of the U.S. Furthermore, the statements of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen have sparked a separate bureaucratic debate within the continent, questioning the Commission’s role in foreign policy.

The E3 (United Kingdom, France, Germany) and Support for the Operation: On the political level, the E3 bloc, setting aside its rhetoric regarding its own crises, adopted a discourse targeting Iran and supporting regime change, instead of discussing the international legal aspects of the attack. The most striking aspect of the process is the integration of Europe’s traditional power centers, both militarily and politically, into the Washington-Tel Aviv axis. The United Kingdom became a logistical part of the intervention by allowing the use of its military bases during the operation. On the French side, President Emmanuel Macron’s rhetorical reservation that the operation did not comply with international law did not change the geopolitical alignment on the ground. Despite this legal objection, the French government actively provided military deterrence support to the intervention by deploying warplanes to the Mediterranean. This profound asymmetry between rhetoric and action clearly confirms the normative inconsistency experienced by the continent.

Germany’s Deviation: Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s stance during his visit to the U.S. represents a turning point in terms of European integration and its position as a bloc in global relations. Beyond fully supporting the U.S. policy on Iran and its goal of regime change, Merz’s endorsement of Trump’s threat of economic sanctions against another EU member, Spain , signifies the dismantling by the U.S. of the principle of economic solidarity, which is the very foundation of the EU’s existence.

Isolated Minority: Countries that have openly spoken out against the violation of international law and condemned the attack by name, particularly Spain and, to a lesser extent, Norway and Denmark, have been isolated within their own continents, threatened by the U.S. for defending founding values, and made vulnerable to political and economic pressure (threats of embargo, etc.) by the European mainstream that has remained silent.

From normative crisis to the quest for hard power

Europe’s reaction to the U.S. and Israeli intervention in Iran is the clearest proof that the crisis is not merely a leadership failure, but a structural disintegration process taking place on the continent. While the continent mobilized international law and sovereignty norms against Russian revisionism in the Ukraine crisis, it has openly suspended these principles in the Iranian equation. The tacit approval by European leaders of the unilateral use of force and regime change agendas of the U.S.-Israel axis serves as evidence for objections arguing that the “rules-based order” rhetoric is not a universal principle for Europe but merely a geopolitical facade. The EU’s acceptance of Trump’s tutelage, considered until recently the greatest threat to its strategic autonomy, without producing any serious and visible strategic objection, is liquidating its normative power claim in the international system.

As analysts have pointed out, Europe’s current military capacity is not at a level to project hard power in the region without a normative veneer of legitimacy. This structural impasse, and its strategic insignificance in the recently evolving Middle East equation, has pushed Europe to construct a narrative of legitimacy in order to reconcile its own values ​​with its geopolitical capitulation. Lacking genuine diplomatic autonomy on the ground, Europe is distorting the causality of the crisis within its own normative illusion, effectively transforming into a passive logistical apparatus of the interventionist axis.

Recent developments and the intervention in Iran have made Europe’s normative double standards and selective solidarity globally visible, simultaneously pushing Europe from static acceptance towards a more pragmatic and harder rationality. Excluded and even humiliated in transatlantic relations, the continent, facing for the first time the reality that the rules-based system may not work for itself, is now softening its normative power illusions and turning towards hard power instruments and new strategic diversification efforts.

Europe’s passive stance towards intervention in Iran has reached a new stage, with leaders now speaking directly to Trump’s political rationality. Chancellor Merz ‘s statement, “It is not the time to lecture our allies,” thus relinquishing his claim to normative superiority, is no ordinary diplomatic maneuver. By directly linking the continent’s Iran policy to “geopolitical vulnerability towards Russia,” the German chancellor has demonstrated that Europe is now openly putting even its most fundamental founding principles on the geopolitical bargaining table to guarantee its own security.

However, the most tangible development accelerated by the Iranian intervention is taking place on the military front, and this transformation is largely shaped by France’s initiative. Paris, which argues that the next half-century will be the “age of nuclear weapons,” has operationalized its new nuclear doctrine with the geopolitical momentum created by the crisis.

With a strategic message delivered from the nuclear submarine base in Brest, France announced its intention to quantitatively increase its current inventory of around 300 warheads and to deploy its next-generation nuclear submarine, codenamed “The Invincible,” by 2036. The real breakthrough in this move, beyond mere national capacity building, is the “enhanced deterrence” architecture agreed upon with eight European countries, including the UK, Germany, and Poland. This new concept means the effective deployment of French nuclear strike force (force de frappe) across the entire European continent through bomber aircraft stationed at allied airbases and joint exercises. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s rationalization of this bloc as a “joint armament that will deter enemies from attacking” is essentially the most concrete manifestation of Europe’s growing conventional weakness and strategic unpredictability, and its eagerness to close this gap through a final, continental arms buildup.

Another specific step taken by France was aimed at overcoming another institutional crisis experienced by the EU. Europe’s institutional paralysis became a much more concrete security vulnerability as the conflict intensifying in the Gulf spilled over into the Eastern Mediterranean. The continent’s inability to generate institutional deterrence against threats to the Greek Cypriot Administration (GCA) was confirmed by a legal impasse in the case of the GCA. The GCA’s inability to invoke the EU’s mutual defense clause (42.7) against regional threats stems, in part, from the Union’s fear of being formally drawn into the war in the Middle East. Therefore, the GCA’s defense burden was left to Greece’s unilateral military buildup. However, shortly afterward, Macron announced the deployment of the French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle to the Mediterranean, intending to, in a way, close this institutional gap.

What’s next for Europe

The current situation demonstrates that the U.S. and Israeli intervention in Iran represents not merely a foreign policy crisis for Europe, but a new and serious moment of confrontation. Above all, this process has brought to light the fundamental structural flaws in the EU’s capacity as a global actor in the Middle East. The most striking reality is that Europe, lacking independent military deterrence and an integrated power projection on the ground, cannot be a meaningful, decisive, and autonomous actor in the Middle East equation without the geopolitical patronage and leadership of the U.S. The continent’s inability to produce independent strategic thinking in times of crisis – as once again demonstrated in the Iran intervention – makes its diplomatic influence entirely dependent on Washington’s initiative and guidance on the ground.

This passivity and loss of initiative is leading to a deep strategic fragmentation within the EU rather than institutional integration. Instead of uniting around a common vision, the Union is producing asymmetrical and reactive policies driven by national security concerns. Moreover, this strategic fragmentation within the continent is directly fueled and deepened by Washington. Washington is openly imposing “taking sides” and unconditional alignment with the American axis on European capitals, leaving them no room for diplomatic maneuvering or the option of neutrality. The threat of sanctions against actors deviating from the mainstream, such as Spain, and the silence of Germany, the locomotive of the continent, are undermining the foundation of solidarity within the EU and turning its members into forced extensions of the U.S.’s unilateral policies.

The most striking historical irony revealed by the crisis in the context of transatlantic relations is the dramatic transformation in Europe’s discourse on security and identity. In recent crises and signs of transatlantic rupture, Europe clung tightly to the discourse of rules-based international order and international law; today, it is rapidly abandoning this normative shield. Values-based diplomacy is giving way to plans to expand the nuclear umbrella, led by France, military buildup, and pure hard power reflexes. Essentially, Europe’s shift towards hard power and militarization is a fundamental strategic recommendation that the U.S. has persistently urged and imposed on the continent in the context of sharing the defense burden. However, Europe is pursuing this goal not as an autonomous and visionary global power, but in a state of panic, having lost its normative credibility, fragmented internally, and subjected to external tutelage.

Having lost its normative power role that dictated diplomacy and rules in previous crises, Europe is increasingly transforming into a classic power politics actor in the increasingly normless global system, seeking to exist not through its values ​​but through its military capacity and geopolitical survival instincts.

(Originally published in Turkish by SETA Foundation)