The institutions of the European Union and the 27 governments of the bloc (each with their nuances) took Israel's side over the weekend and condemned the Israeli attack,
but also called for Israel to restrain itself
. Europe fears that the situation in the Middle East, of high tension since the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel on October 7, will degenerate into a regional war with its attendant negative effects for Europeans, from energy supplies to their fears of waves. of refugees.
The foreign ministers will meet urgently this Tuesday at the request of the head of European diplomacy, the Spanish-Argentine Josep Borrell. And national leaders will do so on Wednesday and Thursday, at a summit that had been planned for two months but will vary its agenda to include the situation in the Middle East. Borrell said, after the announcement of the meeting of foreign ministers: “On behalf of the member states of the European Union,
I condemn in the harshest terms the Iranian attack against Israel
and call on all parties to restraint.”
European diplomacy believes that Iran will be content with having demonstrated that it can launch a broad salvo of drones and missiles against Israel, and at the same time Israel will be able to say that it is untouchable because its defensive systems (and the help of its Western allies and Jordan) will allow it. They allowed 99% of Iranian drones to be shot down, causing only minor damage to a military base. Europe also
believes that Iran did not want to go further
because it warned the Americans, through Iraq and Turkey, days before the launch of the drones and missiles.
That gave Israel and the Westerners who helped (Americans, French and British) time to prepare to shoot down the drones.
But Europe, European diplomatic sources say,
is afraid because it fears that the war will escalate and degenerate
. That is why she calls for restraint from Israel, in addition to condemning Iran and preparing new rounds of sanctions against Tehran.
The fears
Europeans fear above all that a war in the region
will cause an increase in hydrocarbon prices
(the European Commission confirmed this Monday that in 2023 European external dependence on oil had risen to 97.9% of its total consumption) , just when it begins to control the inflation peak of the last two years, caused by the energy crisis derived from the Russian attack on Ukraine.
The other fear is recurring in Europe every time there is a crisis in Africa or the Middle East: refugees. Since in the second half of 2015 and the first half of 2016 more than a million Syrians, Iraqis and Afghans arrived on European territory through Turkey, the Aegean, Greece and the Balkans, Europeans have done everything possible to prevent a repetition. such a scenario. That is why they are signing
migration agreements
with countries in the Middle East and North Africa, so that they act as border gendarmes, preventing departures.
The last ones were negotiated with Tunisia and Mauritania and another one with Egypt has just been announced. But they know that, if there is a massive departure, as in 2015 from Syria, no government in the region is going to take on millions of people on its own, so, as Turkey did, it will allow their passage to Europe.
If
the political relations between Europeans and Iranians are minimal
and European diplomacy does not have a special predilection for the Iranian regime, the Europeans do believe that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu only survives politically thanks to the fact that the war against Hamas continues (with almost 35,000 civilian victims in six and a half months) and an eventual confrontation, of greater or lesser significance, against Iran that the launch of drones and missiles on Saturday night aggravates.
P.B.