In an interview with FOX News after the drone strike that killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said “Frankly, the Europeans haven’t been as helpful as I wish that they could be,” adding, “The Brits, the French, the Germans all need to understand that what we did – what the Americans did – saved lives in Europe as well.”
The Cipher Brief reached out to our expert, Nick Fishwick CMG, who served as a Senior Member of the British Foreign Office, to get a stronger sense of how the targeted killing of Soleimani was received outside the U.S. Fishwick served multiple assignments including in Istanbul and Kabul and served as director for Counterterrorism. His last role before retiring was as director general for international operations.
At the top level, European leaders are giving very cautious support to the US, but they are clearly nervous, apprehensive and uncomfortable. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that “we will not lament” Soleimani’s death. His immediate reaction when told of the Soleimani killing was, according to one report, even briefer. French President Emmanuel Macron expressed “total solidarity with our allies”. Hopeful diplomatic lights have flickered. Mr. Johnson, Mr. Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have spoken to each other and agreed to encourage “de-escalation” - ie please, Iran, don’t overreact. The EU foreign minister, a Mr. Josep Borrell - of whom many of us had previously been unaware - has invited the Iranian foreign minister to Brussels.
As far as the broader political classes here are concerned, the US has clobbered a hornets nest with a baseball bat. In Britain, opposition parties have been critical of the US action. The Labour Party foreign affairs spokesperson, the moderate Emily Thornberry, while expressing no sympathy for Soleimani, said his killing only increases tensions and the danger of war. The lessons of The Chilcot Report (the British review into the Iraq War of 2003) have not been learned, she added. A small but ominous demonstration of the leftist “Stop the War Coalition”, which enjoyed its finest hour in 2003, has taken place in London.
In the British media, you read complaints that the US had not tipped the British government off in advance of the Soleimani killing; so much for the “special relationship”. And there is much media attention here to American voices critical of the US action, including the comments of Mr. Joe Biden, Ms. Elizabeth Warren and Mr. Pete Buttigieg; and to US reports that President Trump, in opting to kill Soleimani, took the most radical option that was presented to him.
The fact is that Iraq and Iran have layers of meaning for the Europeans, especially the British, that they may not have for the US. Iraq, and specifically the war of 2003, is seen by the political classes, most of whom have not read the Chilcot Report, as a scene of shame. It has permanently damaged the reputation of our greatest living statesman, Former Prime Minister Tony Blair; and it more deeply shook the confidence that British people had in the ruling elites. The consequences of that are still being played out. So, when you have an escalation of violence in Iraq cresting with the killing of Soleimani, and the Iraqi parliament calling for our troops to get out...the British political classes see all sorts of demons from the past.
As for Iran, there is still a lot of post-colonial guilt around. British diplomats know how we manipulated Persia as part of the Great Game before 1914, and how we worked with the US to get rid of Mosaddegh in the 1950s. Old countries have long memories. The JCPOA remains popular over here: the best way anyone had come up with to engage Iran constructively. Pretty much all European politicians and securocrats were dismayed when President Trump pulled out of the agreement in 2018. At heart, a lot more Europeans than Americans believe that you can, and have to, do business with Iran - even this regime.
There are more specific concerns. We all remember Mr. Macron’s passionate words at the recent NATO summit about the need to unite against terrorism. At least in the short term, Europeans fear that uniting against ISIS just got harder. The Iranians are holding some dual British-Iranian citizens in prison on flimsy charges: the chances of getting them released just got lower. President Trump’s threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites has caused widespread disgust.
Beyond this, there are the fears of a growing financial and commercial cost as a result of increased disruption to trade and finance. And quite simply, a fear of what the Iranian retaliation may be. For us, life seemed better in 2019.
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