Why the UK, Germany and France harshly criticize Israel on Gaza but support it on Iran

WASHINGTON (JTA) — A decade ago, Israel’s government and the three major powers in Europe were diametrically opposed to Israel on how best to stop Iran from going nuclear. Britain, France and Germany all favored the Iran nuclear deal; Israel did its best to keep it from happening.

Now, with Israel and Iran verging on all-out war, the European governments and Israel are — with minor tonal differences — on the same page. The leaders of all three European countries have said Israel’s right to self-defense and preventing Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon are paramount.

The expressions of support for Israel since it launched attacks on Friday on Iran’s nuclear and weapons systems are especially remarkable because leaders of all three countries have been sharply critical of Israel for its conduct of the war with the Hamas terror group in the Gaza Strip.

Foreign policy experts attributed the comity on Iran to Europe’s alarm at the recent report by UN experts that Iran is closer than ever to nuclear weapons breakout. Another factor is Iran’s alliance with Russia in its war against Ukraine.

“Here’s the UN agency that says, for 20 years, the Iranians have been violating the terms of the [Nuclear] Nonproliferation Treaty,” Dov Zakheim, an undersecretary of defense in the George W. Bush administration, said in an interview, referring to an International Atomic Energy Agency report published just a day before Israel launched its attacks.

“These three countries are totally committed to the NPT, and so their concern is, if the Iranians are violating the NPT — whether it’s within a month, six months, six weeks, six days — the Iranians are going to forge ahead and come up with a nuclear weapon,” said Zakheim, who now comments on foreign policy for The Hill newspaper. “And it’s not just that the weapon is a threat to Israel. It’s a threat to the rest of the Middle East.”

Halie Soifer, a national security adviser to former US vice president Kamala Harris when Harris was a California senator, said the “E3,” as they are known, have for decades been at the forefront of keeping Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

After the IAEA “revealed in the report that Iran was noncompliant, and had failed to disclose its enrichment, it was those three European countries that took the lead in introducing a resolution about it,” said Soifer, who is now the CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America. The resolution, she said, “calls upon Iran to urgently remedy its non-compliance.”

The IAEA report appeared to be very much front of mind for all three leaders in their comments after Israel launched what it said were preventive attacks.

French President Emmanuel Macron said in the immediate aftermath of Israel’s first strikes that Iran was principally responsible because it was accelerating its nuclear program.

“Iran bears a very heavy responsibility for the destabilization of the region,” Reuters quoted Macron as saying on Friday. “Iran is continuing to enrich uranium without any civilian justification and to levels that are very close to what is needed for a nuclear device.”

Keir Starmer, the British prime minister, said on Saturday that he sent combat and support aircraft to the region. The decision, he said, came after what he described as a “good and constructive” conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “that included discussions about the safety and security of Israel, as you would expect, between two allies.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also spoke with Netanyahu. “Israel has the right to defend its existence and the security of its citizens,” he said Sunday in a social media post. “Iran’s nuclear weapons program is an existential threat to the State of Israel.”

All three leaders are in Canada for the G7 summit of leading industrial nations, and each has said they hope the umbrella group – and above all the Trump administration – commit to a united front of supporting Israel while calling for de-escalation. US President Donald Trump appears to be on board.

The tone from the European leaders was markedly different from the harsh criticisms and threatened actions from the same leaders alarmed by reports that Israel is impeding the delivery of humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza. Israel denies the reports.

In recent weeks, Germany’s government announced it was considering the ban of the sale of some weapons to Israel, which would be unprecedented for the country that has traditionally been Israel’s strongest supporter in Europe. France on Monday curtained off an Israeli exhibit at a Paris arms expo, saying it had warned the Israeli manufacturers not to display “offensive” weapons. Britain suspended its free trade negotiations with Israel and sanctioned two extremist ministers.

Laura Blumenfeld, a senior fellow at the Phillip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies at Johns Hopkins University, said the three countries are committed to maintaining what they see as moral foreign policy positions because of their collective “guilt and history” as colonial powers and in Germany’s case, its Nazi past.

“From their point of view, Netanyahu’s assault on Gaza has gone from a reasonable response to October 7,” when Hamas launched the current war with massacres inside Israel, “to a mad act of collective punishment on an enfeebled population,” Blumenfeld said in a text message.

“Iran by contrast is a vast territorial omnivore, a theocracy and threshold nuclear power, that has declared its intent to destroy the small state of Israel. Israel is an ally,” she said. “The threat is existential.”

Also notable was the difference in tone from a decade ago, when the then-leaders of all three countries robustly backed the nuclear deal brokered then by the Obama administration — a deal that Netanyahu did his best to scuttle.

“We are confident that the agreement provides the foundation for resolving the conflict on Iran’s nuclear program permanently,” German chancellor Angela Merkel, French president Francois Hollande and British prime minister David Cameron said in a Washington Post op-ed they coauthored at the time.

By contrast, Ron Dermer, then Netanyahu’s envoy to Washington and now one of his closest advisers, said then on the same pages that  the deal “makes things much worse, increasing the chances of conventional war with Iran and its terror proxies.” In 2018, Trump at Netanyahu’s behest exited the deal, which triggered Iran’s accelerated rush to enrich weapons-grade fissile material.

The three European nations’ current backing for Israel is not inconsistent with their position a decade ago, said Ilan Goldenberg, who held senior Iran-related positions in the Obama administration state and defense departments. In both instances, he said, the Europeans are seeking the best means to keep Iran from going nuclear; the difference is, Iran is now much closer to a weapon.

“Our European allies probably feel, ‘This is not what we wanted, but now that we’re here, we’ll certainly be happier if it ends in a way where Iran’s program is set back as much as possible,’” said Goldenberg, now a senior vice president at J Street, a liberal Jewish Middle East policy group.

Another factor in Europe’s wariness of Iran is its regime’s long history — essentially from its inception in 1979 — of deploying assassins and terrorists to Germany, France and other countries to eliminate its dissidents and enemies. “We are preparing for Iran to target Israeli or Jewish targets in Germany,” Merz said in his statement.

Also at play is Iran’s alliance with and tactical assistance to Russia as its war against Ukraine drags on.

Zakheim said recent threats by acolytes of Russian President Vladimir Putin to go nuclear have deeply unsettled Europe. “All his henchmen keep talking about using nuclear weapons, which really terrifies Western Europe and the big Western European countries,” he said.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “is Putin’s arms dealer, a reliable supplier of drones,” Blumenfeld said. “And Israel is blowing up his business.”