While American bombs fall on Iranian cities for a second straight week, Europe is performing a geopolitical contortion act that would impress a circus performer. On March 1, the EU called for “maximum restraint, protection of civilians and full respect of international law.” On March 11, it imposed fresh sanctions — not on the countries doing the bombing, but on 19 Iranian officials and entities accused of repressing the January protests. The message to Tehran was unmistakable: we oppose this war, but we also oppose you.
That awkward split has prompted Richard Youngs of the Carnegie Endowment to argue that Europe needs a “third way” in Iran — one that rejects the illegality of the US-Israeli war while actively supporting the Iranian people’s aspirations for political reform. It is a reasonable argument. It is also one that, in the current climate, almost nobody in Tehran or Washington is listening to.
Europe remains deeply divided on questions of military intervention and the use of force, and the lack of a unified reaction reflects “the fundamental reality that Europe has relatively limited strategic weight in the conflict itself.” The speed and scale of the strikes took most European governments by surprise — the United States launched a major military operation with little to no consultation, while expecting to use European bases and receive broad support. Once again, European leaders found themselves scrambling to react to a conflict they had neither anticipated nor prepared for.
The fractures run deep. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called the Iranian regime “a terrorist regime responsible for decades of oppression” and said Germany shares Washington’s interest in ending it — breaking alignment with the UK and France. Spain took the opposite position, refusing to allow its jointly operated bases to be used for strikes not covered by the UN Charter — a stand of principle that earned it a Trump threat to “cut off trade.” Britain threaded the needle most carefully: Prime Minister Keir Starmer accepted a US request to use British bases “to prevent Iran from firing missiles across the region,” stressing “we are not joining these strikes, but we will continue with our defensive actions.”
It was reported that Commission President Ursula von der Leyen supports regime change in Iran, while NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Europe is “supportive” of the US attacks, adding he felt the US “knows what it is doing.” EUobserver’s verdict was blunt: “Europe’s response to the American and Israeli strikes on Iran has been shameful: stunned, sidelined, and disunited.”
Sanctions on the Victim, Solidarity With the Aggressor?
The timing of the EU’s latest sanctions package is what makes the Carnegie argument so pointed. The EU approved a new round of sanctions against Iranian officials and entities accused of committing serious human rights violations — targeting those responsible for the violent crackdown on protesters in January 2026, when thousands were killed. The new sanctions do not include Mojtaba Khamenei, Iran’s new supreme leader. Kallas said the measures send “a message to Tehran that Iran’s future cannot be built on repression.”
Iran’s response was furious. Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei criticized von der Leyen for “hypocrisy and double standards,” accusing her of “green-lighting occupation, genocide, and atrocities, and now laundering U.S./Israeli crime of aggression and war crimes against Iranians.”
The optics are genuinely damaging. As Youngs notes, the EU has erred in recent years by stepping back from human rights support in Iran and focusing almost exclusively on nuclear negotiations. Iranian democratic activists have been sharply critical of the EU for sidelining such support. Now, the bloc is sanctioning Iranian officials for repression while effectively tolerating a war that has killed over 1,200 Iranian civilians — including 165 children in a school bombing that the EU has not condemned by name.
The Third Way — and Why It’s So Narrow
Youngs argues the EU should chart a path between opposing illegal military attacks and disengaging from concerns over political rights. He proposes a flexible fund that can be quickly mobilized when the possibility of democratic change emerges, and calls for European facilitation of dialogue between Iranian exiles, civic movements, and potential reformers inside the system.
The idea has merit. The EU’s own official statement reiterates “solidarity with the Iranian people and strongly supports their fundamental aspirations for a future where their universal human rights and fundamental freedoms are fully respected.” But good intentions run into hard realities.
First, the war itself has hardened Iranian society, not softened it. Hundreds of thousands rallied behind Mojtaba Khamenei in Tehran. The younger Khamenei’s ascension suggests more hardline factions retain power, with one IRGC commander telling state television the country is capable of keeping up attacks for at least six months. Second, any European outreach to Iranian reformers during an active bombing campaign will be perceived in Tehran as regime-change activity by another name — precisely the charge Baghaei leveled at von der Leyen.
Third, Europe’s own credibility is in tatters. The Global South “will be the ultimate judge of whether Europe is serious,” and “hypocrisy will cost Europe dearly” — the US and Israel’s violations of international law offer “a stark test.” A continent that cannot agree on whether to call a war illegal, cannot prevent its bases from being used for strikes it claims to oppose, and sanctions the bombed rather than the bombers will struggle to position itself as an honest broker for democratic reform anywhere.
European Council President Antonio Costa has said Russia is the only country benefitting from the war, as global energy prices soar and attention from Ukraine is diverted. That assessment is probably correct — and it captures the deeper irony of Europe’s predicament. The EU built its Iran policy around the JCPOA and the promise of diplomatic engagement. Trump destroyed that framework. Now Europe is left with neither a deal to defend nor a war it can influence, issuing sanctions against a country being bombed by its closest ally and calling for a political future it has no power to shape.
Youngs is right that passive disengagement is not an answer. But active engagement requires something Europe has not yet demonstrated in this crisis: the willingness to act on its own principles even when Washington objects. Until then, the “third way” remains what it has always been in European foreign policy — an aspiration in search of the political courage to make it real.
