The entire Western world needs to take a clear stand.
Iran's regime -- not to be confused with its tormented people, many of whom have sacrificing their lives since 1999 trying to oust it -- has, since its installation in 1979, threatened "Death to America" ("the Great Satan") and "Death to Israel" ("the Little Satan").
"When you chant 'Death to America!' it is not just a slogan," Iran's late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei announced in 2023, "it is a policy." The year before, he predicted:
"Death to America will happen. In the new order I am talking about, America will no longer have any important role."
In 2008, Iran's then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad promised that Israel "will be wiped off [the map]."
The so-called "moderate" former Iranian President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, on "Al Quds Day," December 14, 2001, said:
"The use of even one nuclear bomb inside Israel will destroy everything.... It is not irrational to contemplate such an eventuality."
The Iranian regime, after creating its proxy terrorist group Hezbollah in 1982, lost no time turning magnificent Lebanon into a failed state. For years, Iran has been among the primary funder of Hezbollah, Yemen's Houthis and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, as well as providing material support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. Iran was also deeply involved in planning the Hamas invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023.
For 39 years running, Iran has boasted the prestigious label, conferred on it by the US State Department, of the "world's leading state sponsor of terrorism." Iran, along with Qatar, is reportedly a principal financier of international Islamic terrorism as well as a leading agent of global destabilization.
Iran's regime is responsible for killing 241 American servicemen in the 1983 attack on the US Marines barracks in Beirut, as well as hundreds of American soldiers in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. It has also orchestrated terrorist attacks and attempted assassinations within the United States, including the September 11, 2001 attacks.
For years, despite repeated denials and proudly evading international inspections, Iran's regime has been trying to acquire nuclear weapons. US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff detailed that Iran's representatives had actually opened negotiations by announcing that they had enough uranium enriched to 60% -- days away from converting to the weapons-grade level of 90% -- for 11 nuclear bombs "in one week, maybe 10 days at the outside."
Although the United States and Israel carried out strikes on Iran's main nuclear facilities in June 2025, Iran claimed that they still control roughly 460 kg of 60% enriched uranium.
Israel and the United States seem to have concluded, as US President Franklin Roosevelt had regarding the Third Reich in 1941, that, "When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck to crush him."
The Iranian regime's "a week to 10 days" must have sounded sufficiently like an "imminent threat" and a "clear and present danger" to have the Trump Administration decide that it would be preferable to neutralize the regime before the regime neutralized the United States.
The war, launched on February 28, should have had the support of the entire Free World. It did not.
In the United States, before the election of President Donald Trump, four sitting presidents --- Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Joe Biden – as well as countless officials from both sides of the aisle, had announced that Iran must not be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons, but had never done anything about it.
Worse, the Obama and Biden Administrations, by trying to bribe Iran's regime into slowing its nuclear weapons development, instead effectively funded and enabled it -- complete with "sunset clauses" in Obama's 2015 JCPOA "nuclear deal," which would have enabled Iran legitimately to have as many nuclear weapons as it liked by October 2025. When Trump cancelled the JCPOA in 2018, that was the bullet he skillfully dodged.
The same kind of bribe had already backfired earlier with North Korea. In 1994, Clinton negotiated the "Agreed Framework" with North Korea to freeze and then dismantle its existing nuclear weapons program. Clinton then saw to it that Japan and South Korea provided North Korea's leader, Kim Jong II, with more than $4 billion -- which he immediately seems to have used to complete his nuclear program. Nobody stopped him.
It was only a few years ago that the Biden Administration was claiming that Iran represented a major danger. Then Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced in October 2021 that time was "running short". Today, US Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who eloquently wrote against supporting Obama's nuclear deal, says that attacking Iran before it could attack the West constitutes "a war of choice, not necessity".
There was no point in allowing Iran to become another North Korea. "You want to see the stock market go down?" Trump asked on Fox News. "Let a couple of nuclear bombs be dropped on us."
Other American politicians have wrongly accused the Trump administration of violating the arguably unconstitutional 1973 War Powers Act. Article 2(c) recognizes the president's authority to deploy armed forces without prior Congressional approval following an "attack upon the United States... or its armed forces" for up to 60 days without Congressional approval, with a possible extension of 30 days. Iran possesses a long history of launching armed attacks against U.S. armed forces.
Trump did not ask America's allies for troops or even materiel. He merely requested the use of military bases -- some of which, such as Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, are shared by the UK and the US -- or for fly-over rights.
The reactions of most Western European leaders were, in diplospeak, "disappointing " -- dismissive and cowardly -- and remain so to this day.
Just hours after the elimination of Khamenei, French President Emmanuel Macron stated that military operations against Iran were "dangerous for all" and had to stop immediately. While "deploring" Hezbollah's terrorist attacks on Israel, Macron urged Israel to cease its military operations in Lebanon and seems to want to save Hezbollah. Macron added that France would only "act to defend its allies" – thereby evidently excluding Israel and the United States from France's allies.
A few hours later, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer declared he would only support a "peaceful, negotiated solution."
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz emphasized that "Germany is not a party to this war" –overlooking, as Trump wasted no time pointing out, that the US, which has almost single-handedly been funding Europe's defense since the end of World War II through NATO, was not a party to Russia's war on Ukraine.
When, on March 15, Trump called upon European leaders to participate in the defense of the Strait of Hormuz, every last one refused, despite their being far more dependent on oil and gas shipped through the Strait of Hormuz than the US.
Trump warned European countries that failing to heed his call could have consequences. After NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte urged European leaders to reconsider their response, several, along with Japan, issued a joint statement on March 19, expressing their "readiness to contribute."
Macron then "clarified" his position. France, he stated, might agree to intervene only after the "intense phase of the conflict has ended" — when French intervention would be useless.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius stated that Germany would act only after a ceasefire was declared — when the battle was over.
Starmer, while maintaining his refusal, organized instead a virtual meeting with officials from more than 40 countries to find a "diplomatic solution" to the problem. To what surely must have been everyone's incalculable astonishment, no diplomatic solution could be found.
Macron, surpassing himself, closed French airspace to American and Israeli military aircraft involved in military operations against Iran's regime and Hezbollah. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, by denying US military aircraft access to NATO bases in Spain from the first day of the war, had already made the same decision. Most disappointingly, Italy's otherwise extraordinary Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni refused access to the NATO base in Sigonella, Sicily. Austria, not to be left out, invoked its ostensible "neutrality" and closed its airspace to American military aircraft.
The United Kingdom is supposed to allow US bombers to use military bases on its territory at least for "defensive missions". Initially, Starmer refused to allow American aircraft the use of the joint US-UK airbase Diego Garcia; he finally allowed access, after the airstrikes were pretty much over, but only for "defensive missions." In Germany, until now, the Ramstein airbase theoretically remains available for use by the U.S. Air Force. Scandalously, NATO-affiliated or joint bases — for which the US covers the overwhelming majority of operating costs and maintenance — were closed to US warplanes by the very countries that host them. "Allies" of the United States, obstructing its military operations, were forcing US warplanes to take long, costly detours.
Trump, in return, is reviewing America's relationship with NATO.
Macron, visiting Japan on April 1, tried to persuade Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi to stop relying solely on Washington. Macron then went to South Korea, where he urged "middle power" countries to unite against the US and China. He appeared to see no difference between the United States, a democracy fighting against a monstrous regime, and China, a totalitarian country that supports Iran's regime.
On April 2, France, along with Russia and China -- Iran's allies -- vetoed a UN Security Council resolution, drafted by Arab states and supported by the US, that condemned Iran's actions against the Arab countries of the Persian Gulf and called for the use of force to unblock the Strait of Hormuz. The next day, France obtained a "separate agreement" or tacit permission through diplomatic channels for a ship belonging to a company, CMA CGM, owned by French-Lebanese businessman Rodolphe Saadé, to pass through the Strait.
For decades, Western European countries have been living for free under the umbrella of American defense. Instead of spending money on armies to ensure their security, Europe's leaders have built costly welfare states and promoted the idea that virtually all conflicts can be solved by appeasing the enemy and yielding to his demands. This idea gained even more momentum after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the "holiday from history," when military budgets throughout the West declined even further. Meanwhile, Western European leaders had begun to speak of American presidents defending the United States with contempt.
The immigration to Western Europe of increasingly large Muslim populations, who never assimilated and seem quite devoted to a hatred for Israel and Jews -- as well as for Christians -- has contributed to a resurgence in antagonism toward Jews among political leaders seeking votes throughout Western Europe.
While all Western European leaders expressed their horror after Hamas's massacres on October 7, 2023, many quickly accused Israel of cruelty, when, in fact, its military was acting not only in its own defense but also to eliminate threats against Europe. Some leaders even falsely accused Israel of "genocide" when in fact it is actually Hamas, in Article 7 of its 1988 Charter, that calls for the annihilation of all Jews – similar to the criminal spirit of the blood libels so common during the ugliest moments of Europe's past.
Most of these politicians in Europe never condemned decades of atrocities committed by Iran's regime. On January 9, 2026 — at the very moment Iran's regime was slaughtering more than 30,000 of its unarmed people on the streets — Starmer, Macron and Merz published a joint statement heroically expressing "deep concern." That was it.
Trump used a single word to characterize the leaders of West European countries: "cowards."
"Western Europe is profoundly afflicted by a political and sociological death wish," wrote Conrad Black last month. "The United States will not save them from that; only they can."
The prospect of "civilizational erasure" was also raised by the 2025 US National Security Strategy.
Israel — which most West European leaders in power seem to hold in contempt — is clearly the most reliable ally of the United States; it is these West European leaders who deserve to be held in contempt. Under their dismal and unprincipled leadership, and their wanton surrender to demanding newcomers, Western Europe as we know it may well be heading toward collapse.
Dr. Guy Millière, a professor at the University of Paris, is the author of 27 books on France and Europe.
