Moral Posturing at Zero Cost |
The European posture since the outbreak of the US/Iran conflict in February 2026 in 6 phases 1—Powerlessness as basic data. Europe has no deployable navy in the Gulf, no bilateral alliances with Tehran or Riyadh that give it real leverage, and an energy dependency that the US and Qatari Liquefied Natural Gas have reduced but not eliminated. Its non-involvement is therefore not just a choice: it is a structural constraint. To criticize it as “cowardice” without naming it “impotence” is to confuse the symptoms and the disease.
2—Anti-Trumpism as a catalyst. This is where the most intellectually dishonest confusion occurs in the European media. The rejection of the Trump method – open coercion, contempt for multilateral institutions, and simultaneous tariff blackmail – is legitimate and documented. But this rejection slips insensibly towards an anti-Americanism of substance which ends up invalidating the strategic substance of the action: to dismantle the Iranian ballistic........