When the United States and Israel carried out their opening airstrikes against Iran on Feb. 28, most European governments learned about the operation only shortly before it happened, if they were warned at all. There were no consultations and no attempts to secure European backing in the runup to what now looks like a preordained operation. As a result, the statements issued by European capitals in response felt largely procedural. The direction of travel was beyond their control.
That is the backdrop against which governments in Central and Eastern Europe have been scrambling to position themselves. The region represents the stretch of the continent where U.S. President Donald Trump’s brand of populist nationalism has found its most natural echo, where suspicion of Brussels runs deepest and where the trans-Atlantic relationship has long been understood primarily in security terms. But their responses have so far been fractured and self-serving, revealing the range of interests at stake.
The clearest and most unambiguous responses came from the region’s most exposed states. The Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Czechia have all, in their different registers, backed Washington, and they have done so by making the same argument: Iran is not just a Middle Eastern problem; it is a European one, because Tehran has been arming Moscow in its war against Ukraine.