Middle East: as Brussels calls for ‘restraint’, Iran strikes US bases in response to Washington’s attack on its nuclear sites

Brussels – In the aftermath of the US-led bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, the Foreign Ministers of the Twenty-Seven met to call again on all sides for de-escalation and diplomacy. However, at the very end of the meeting, while High Representative Kaja Kallas failed to condemn Washington and Tel Aviv’s military actions in the Middle East, the first direct retaliation against the US bases in Qatar and Iraq was reportedly being launched from Tehran, in what could be the escalation capable of extending the conflict to the entire region.

Besides the revision of the EU-Israel association agreement, the main topic of discussion at the Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels today (23 June) was the escalation of the Middle East crisis unleashed by the Jewish state with the attack on 13 June. The US bombings on Iranian nuclear sites, which took place over the weekend, were joined earlier in the day by new Israeli attacks on the Fordo underground facility, built under the mountains south of Tehran, and against other targets in the Islamic Republic.

As this article is published, international news agencies are reporting Iranian missile explosions in Qatar and Iraq in the direction of US military bases. The attacks, claimed by the Islamic Republic as “a powerful and successful response of the Iranian armed forces to American aggression,” constitute a further grave leap forward in the conflict between Tel Aviv and Washington on the one hand and Tehran on the other, which now directly involves US assets in the region and thus has the potential to start a spiral of uncontrollable violence. President Donald Trump is currently in the White House situation room.

Yet Brussels fails to call either Washington or Tel Aviv to their responsibilities, not even to name them. “The new war is a dangerous development, and recent military actions heightened tensions,” Kaja Kallas remarked at the end of the meeting (which ended before the Iranian attacks against US bases started), noting that “military actions are always fraught with risks and uncertainties. What matters now is minimizing the risk of further escalation.“

The head of EU diplomacy was, however, careful not to condemn those who have been conducting those actions for the past ten days, literally putting the Middle East on fire. When pressed by journalists on how the EU intends to act concretely to put pressure on Israel or the United States, as well as Iran, to silence arms and make way for negotiations, Kallas hid behind an empty turn of phrase, assuring that “we are talking to all the parties,” including the US, to signal that “this escalation benefits no one.“

EU high representative for foreign affairs, Kaja Kallas (photo: Consiglio europeo)

According to the High Representative, today’s meeting revealed “a broad consensus among the member states on the need to continue discussions with Iran because diplomacy is the only way to reach an agreement” and arrive at a political settlement of the crisis, which in the meantime is worsening by the hour. Therefore, she assures that “we certainly stay in touch” with the leadership of the Islamic Republic.

For the time being, the negotiating efforts of European diplomacy have not yielded any results. On 20 June, France, Germany, the UK, and the EU – the European members of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal, moribund since Trump withdrew the US in 2018 –
met in Geneva with Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, to try to restart dialogue over the ayatollahs’ atomic ambitions.

However, that timid diplomatic initiative (the only one ever attempted since the beginning of the war) was shattered by the rain of anti-bunker bombs that the Pentagon dropped on the Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan facilities in the following hours. Since then, the Islamic Republic has hardened its position, expressly refusing to sit at the negotiating table with either Israel or the United States (its two most bitter enemies, which it notoriously calls ‘little Satan’ and ‘big Satan’).

Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) welcomes Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi to the Kremlin (photo via Imagoeconomica)

Araghchi traveled to Moscow today, where he met with Vladimir Putin face-to-face. At the end of their talks, the Kremlin’s occupant reaffirmed Russia’s support for its Middle Eastern ally, noting that the US’s “absolutely unprovoked aggression” against Iran “has no basis or justification” and lamenting the lack of warning from the US administration.

Earlier, NATO chief Mark Rutte gave a diametrally opposed view. On the eve of the critical summit in The Hague, where the Alliance members gave the green light to the increase in military spending to 5 percent of GDP (with the only exception, perhaps, Spain’s Pedro Sánchez), the former Dutch prime minister said he did not believe that “what the United States has done goes against international law.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz shared this stance: “There is no reason to criticize what America did over the weekend.” “Of course, it is not without risk” in terms of potential consequences, he conceded, “but leaving things as they were was not an option.” Words that sound sadly prophetic. And who knows, in The Hague, we may be talking about another five: not the percentage of GDP, but the article of the Atlantic Charter enshrining the principle of collective defense.