France called for an emergency UN Security Council session. The European Union called for "restraint." Spain described the US-Israeli operation as contributing to "a more uncertain and hostile international order." The statements arrived within the same 72-hour window as Britain's refusal to join offensive operations — a cascade of European distancing that left Washington and Jerusalem prosecuting Operation Epic Fury without a single NATO ally.
The fracture is wider than Iraq. In February 2003, France and Germany opposed the invasion, but Britain, Poland, Spain under Aznar, Denmark, and Australia joined a coalition that eventually numbered over 40 states. In 2011, France and Britain led the Libya intervention with broad European participation. Here, no European state has committed forces. Even Britain's contribution is limited to base access described as defensive, and London has publicly refused to go further. The coalition consists of two states: the United States and Israel.
France's Security Council call is procedurally available but practically constrained — the United States holds a permanent veto, and no resolution condemning the strikes can pass without American consent. The session's value is forensic: a forum where the legal basis for the campaign will be examined on the record. That record matters because the Pentagon's 90-minute congressional briefing reportedly produced no evidence of the imminent Iranian threat cited as the operation's justification, a gap Senator Mark Warner of the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed publicly on NPR. Spain's position carries additional weight because the Sánchez government recognised Palestinian statehood in May 2024, establishing Madrid as among the more willing European critics of Israeli military operations.
The EU's collective "restraint" is the institutional minimum — the lowest common denominator among 27 member states whose positions range from Spain's open criticism to the near-silence of countries with close US defence ties. What is absent from every European statement is any proposal for intervention, mediation, or enforcement. South Africa, which brought the ICJ genocide case against Israel, has not criticised Washington. India condemned Iran's retaliatory strikes on Gulf states at the UN but issued no statement on the US-Israeli strikes that started the campaign . Europe, the Global South's leading diplomatic voices, and the BRICS bloc — which has issued no joint statement more than a week into the strikes — have opinions about this war. None has a plan to end it.
