CounterPunch Exclusives

CounterPunch Exclusives

Closing Air Spaces and Cracking Alliances: Trump’s Growing Problem with Allies

Photograph Source: Dan Scavino Jr. – Public Domain

With the Iran War groaning along, the Trump administration is getting increasingly indignant.  Plumes of childish anger can be seen coming out of the White House and Pentagon.  Having joined an illegal, joint enterprise with Israel in attacking Iran, allies are proving increasingly unwilling to play along.

That unwillingness gurgled to the top with Spain’s announcement on March 30 that it had closed its airspace to US aircraft participating in strikes on Iran.  This added to Madrid’s decision earlier in the month to deny the US military access to its bases for military operations against Tehran.  “We don’t authorise either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran,” Defence Minister Margarita Robles told reporters.  Spain’s Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo, in an interview with radio Cadena SER, called the move consistent and “part of the decision already made by the Spanish government not to participate in or contribute to a war which was initiated unilaterally and against international law.”

The government of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been singularly pertinacious in its characterisation of the Iran War, and more broadly illustrative of the current bad blood in transatlantic relations.  In a piece for The Economist, Sánchez wrote of his country’s misplaced support for Washington in February 2003 when the then US Secretary of State, Colin Powell, told the UN Security Council most gravely that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and needed to be attacked.   The foolishly........

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