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this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2026
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Accidentally deleted my reply so I'll make this one shorter, but basically European sanctions, arms sales and diplomacy have been crucial in getting Iran into a position where its only recourse to an American attack is closing Hormuz, and that's not to mention Britain letting America use its bases and ongoing European trade with Israel. Just about the only major country I'd consider calling less guilty (certainly not innocent) here is Spain, and all of Europe is not Spain. For a particularly egregious example, Britain is still letting America use its military bases for this war, and y'all keep capitulating to Trump (see: literally yesterday).
The European sanctions and nuclear deal were working.
The UK just sanctioned Israel.
Is that your idea of a response to what I said? Because you address exactly none of the points I actually made.
Sure, for a grand total of two years when America allowed them to out of over forty (counting from the Iranian Revolution in 1979). Before and after that it was more American imperialism with European cooperation.
The UK sanctioned Israeli settlements. That's symbolically significant, but it doesn't cancel out their current sins (like, again, letting America use their military bases), let alone their past ones.
Your points are just opinions.
Ah, yes, there's a whole Wikipedia article compiling my opinions on the UK's cooperation with the Iran war.
We sell a lot of defence kit to our allies in the region. So what?
Are you defending fucking Iran? The regime killed tens of thousands of people this year alone.
So it's not just "Trump and Bibi's war" now. Well that's about all there is to say, enjoy your imperialist boomerang.
They've been throwing rocks at eachother for thousands of years, we just sell good rocks.
Just to reply to that: Even if the Europeans didn't sanction Iran and were providing them with weapons: The USA is the worlds biggest and strongest military and there is no chance that Iran would not have to use their biggest geopolitical leverage against them in a war. Do not try to blame the EU for Trump starting a war.
Finally an intelligent response. As a minimum culpability measure, we know that America entered this war because Israel did, and it's undeniably Israel wouldn't have started this war if he knew it'd cause European trade to dry up. The EU+Britain deserve at least the blame for not using that. With that in mind,
True, but America wouldn't have started this war if there were going to be consequences for doing so. I remember last year when Canada, Japan and the EU+Britain started selling American bonds to force Trump to back off from Greenland and Canada (which he did, rhetoric aside), so Europe clearly has options for escalation. We've also gotten no indication that European countries tried to pressure the countries hosting America's military bases not to cooperate with the war (which they obviously have the leverage to do since they keep selling them weapons), and it's entirely possible that those countries would've refused to allow it from the beginning if they knew it'd get them in hot water with the EU and Britain. And of course there's no way to know if an Iran not hampered by EU sanctions would've had better diplomatic contacts able to stop this mess from happening peacefully, or stronger proxies able to make it foolish enough that even MBS decides he'd rather not try his luck. Maybe the war would've happened anyway, but it could've not happened either and Europe decided it'd rather not even try to prevent it.
This assumes a sane and rational actor in the white house and we do not have that. I kind of agree with some of your analysis, but I really doubt that any of that would really have had a lasting effect on that totally insane shitshow currently happening in the USA. They didn't even seem to have listened to their own war planners who have planned scenarios for Iran for decades.
So two things: First, Trump isn't a sane and rational actor, but there are sane and rational actors in the US federal government and especially Congress and the private sector (for example the media) that are doing the math on risk vs reward and coming to the conclusion that they should be backing him anyway. No man rules alone; if for example Raytheon or Amazon or General Motors thought that there would be serious consequences to their bottom line if Trump was allowed to continue, he'd have eaten a war powers resolution by now. Hitler wasn't rational, but you don't get Hitler without the industrialists and the industrialists backed Hitler because they were getting something out of the deal. Serious backlash from Europe would essentially unite the American capitalist class against Trump, with disastrous consequences for him.
Second, I partially took this into account, which is why I kept emphasizing actors outside the US whose consent mattered here. America can't project power into Iran without the cooperation of its allies in the Middle East who are much more rational and much more vulnerable to persuasion/coercion by Europe. Trade are obviously very important here (particularly but not exclusively to Israel), and Britain and France maintain important defense relations with several countries in the region. The Emirates for example are an important US ally on the region and I doubt they'd have allowed this to happen (at least on their own soil) if they feared that French arms would dry up. Nobody anywhere seems to have "Europe will hate/like me for this" as part of their calculations here and that's not the limit of the collective biggest economy in the world's influence.