GORDON SONDLAND: No more ‘restraint’: Europe must stand with America on Iran

The are doing the heavy lifting. On February 28, joint American-Israeli strikes— and Operation Roaring Lion—eliminated Iranian Supreme Leader , Irans defense minister, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council. 

American service members and Israeli pilots are in harms way at this very moment, absorbing retaliatory strikes so that the free world does not have to live under the shadow of a nuclear-armed theocracy. And what has Europe offered? Ursula von der Leyen called the situation “greatly concerning.” warned of an “outbreak of war.” France, Germany and the United Kingdom rushed to clarify that their forces did not participate. 

The collective message from the continent was not solidarity but distance. If the transatlantic alliance cannot count on Europe for even full-throated public support while Americans and Israelis bear the costs and the risks, then what, exactly, is the alliance for?

I write from experience. As the United States ambassador to the , I was charged with urging our allies to abandon the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and join Americas maximum-pressure campaign. 

What I encountered in Brussels was willful denial. European officials performed extraordinary contortions to avoid acknowledging what the intelligence made plain: Iran had already violated the deal. Federica Mogherini, the EUs then-High Representative, was simply uninterested in any evidence that contradicted her narrative. And the creation of INSTEX—a financial vehicle designed to circumvent American sanctions and keep European trade with Iran flowing—was a breathtaking display of misplaced priorities. 

At a moment when the democratic world should have been tightening the vice, Europe was engineering workarounds to do business with the mullahs. Iran took note and then systematically violated every enrichment limit the JCPOA imposed, reaching 60% purity—a short technical step from weapons-grade material. Europes fidelity to the JCPOA did not restrain Iran. It enabled Iran.

What makes Europes sideline posture not merely disappointing but absurd is that Iran has been attacking Europe for years. 

In 2018, an Iranian diplomat operating out of the Vienna embassy was convicted in Belgium for masterminding a plot to bomb a rally of Iranian dissidents near Paris—a gathering of tens of thousands, including a sitting British MP who said that, had the plot succeeded, it would have been the deadliest terror operation ever carried out on . 

In London, a journalist with Iran International was stabbed near his home by assailants linked to Tehran. MI5s director general disclosed that British security services tracked more than 20 potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in a single year. 

Dutch intelligence linked Tehran to assassination attempts in the Netherlands. German and French authorities exposed Iranian agents hiring European criminals to surveil Jewish targets in Paris, Munich and Berlin. 

Iran has not merely threatened Europe in the abstract. It has deployed operatives, recruited criminal proxies and attempted mass-casualty attacks on European soil. And still, Europe equivocates.

The chose this path. It enriched uranium to near-weapons-grade levels. It armed and directed Hamas in the barbaric Oct. 7 attack. It unleashed the Houthis on international shipping. And when its own people rose up in the largest protests since the 1979 revolution, the regime slaughtered thousands of unarmed civilians on Khameneis direct orders—the largest street massacres in modern Iranian history. 

Even as Omans foreign minister announced a supposed breakthrough in nuclear talks two days before the strikes, Iran was tripling its oil exports to sanction-proof its economy. The diplomatic runway was exhausted.

Now . The IRGCs senior leadership has been eliminated. Ali Larijanis hastily announced temporary leadership c