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A renewed U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran had been widely expected since last summer. Supporters of diplomacy and international law pinned their hopes on the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in Oman and Switzerland, though few truly believed they were anything more than a smokescreen. After a year in which U.S. President Donald Trump launched attacks on Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, Venezuela, and Yemen—all without widespread international support—it takes a concerted effort not to grow numb at his predatory use of U.S. power. In this context, the news of yet another illegal war against Iran—even as diplomacy was nominally ongoing—generated sadness but not surprise.

More shocking, however, was the European reaction. If an alien had landed in Europe and turned to its leaders for an explanation of events in the Middle East, it would not have learned that Israel and the United States attacked Iran. It would have instead concluded that Iran launched the war.

A renewed U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran had been widely expected since last summer. Supporters of diplomacy and international law pinned their hopes on the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks in Oman and Switzerland, though few truly believed they were anything more than a smokescreen. After a year in which U.S. President Donald Trump launched attacks on Iraq, Iran, Nigeria, Syria, Somalia, Venezuela, and Yemen—all without widespread international support—it takes a concerted effort not to grow numb at his predatory use of U.S. power. In this context, the news of yet another illegal war against Iran—even as diplomacy was nominally ongoing—generated sadness but not surprise.

More shocking, however, was the European reaction. If an alien had landed in Europe and turned to its leaders for an explanation of events in the Middle East, it would not have learned that Israel and the United States attacked Iran. It would have instead concluded that Iran launched the war.

The absence of any official European condemnation of the U.S. and Israeli attack was unsurprising, a reflection of the continent’s ongoing geopolitical dependence on Washington. What stood out, however, was the extent to which the official reaction distorted reality to avoid even acknowledging the tension between Europe’s response and its values.

On social media, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen referenced the European Union’s sanctions against Iran’s “murderous regime.” She then condemned Iran’s “reckless and indiscriminate attacks on its neighbours and sovereign countries” and finally embraced regime change in Tehran. European Parliament President Roberta Metsola called for ending the “age of dictators in Iran,” while German Chancellor Friedrich Merz declared, “We share the interest of the United States and Israel in seeing an end to this regime’s terror and its dangerous nuclear and ballistic armament.” He then added, more alarmingly, “This is not the time to lecture our partners and allies.”

The E3—France, Germany and the United Kingdom—issued a joint statement condemning “Iranian attacks on countries in the region in the strongest terms.” A day later, they released another statement that said: “We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.”

As always, not every European country sang from the same hymn sheet. Spain, Norway, Denmark, and a few others had the courage to call a spade a spade, naming—and even condemning, in some cases—the attack for what it was. Other countries, like Italy, leaned in the opposite direction, explicitly backing the U.S.-Israeli assault despite Washington’s failure to even warn Italy’s defense minister, who was on holiday in Dubai and left to fend for himself. Most of the other European governments aligned with the E3’s position.

How should Europe’s depressing response be interpreted? Traditionally, Europeans have been world champions in normative grandstanding, framing their foreign policy as value-driven for decades. As the security environment deteriorated and brute force regained currency, Europeans grew more accustomed to speaking the language of power, though they never fully abandoned their traditional value-based rhetoric. Some even tried to conceptualize this balancing act, coining terms like “principled pragmatism” and “value-based realism.”

Normative grandstanding inevitably invites hypocrisy. The practice of power rarely aligns with normative aspirations, especially in regions like the Middle East, where colonial legacies, pro-Israel bias, and U.S. followership make Europeans particularly vulnerable to such accusations. This charge resurfaced with particular force during Israel’s war in Gaza, as Europe’s complicity contrasted sharply with its continued rhetoric of rights and law.

There are three ways to end hypocrisy. The first, and hardest, is to close the gap by living up to normative ideals. Europe has done this, however imperfectly, in Ukraine—not purely out of morality but because its hard security interests were at stake. Yet it did so, nonetheless.

A second way is to abandon norms altogether. Trump may be accused of many things, but hypocrisy is not one of them. There is no pretense of respecting international law, no attempt—however insincere—to seek United Nations or even congressional approval for his military adventures. There is no normative veneer over the crude exercise of power. Trump’s path to ending hypocrisy is to discard norms and embrace unrepentant power politics.

Europe cannot follow that route. While it may violate norms, it cannot publicly disavow them as the United States does. There is no effective exercise of European hard power stripped of normative claims. Europeans simply lack the military might to do so. A world without any semblance of norms is one in which Europe is more vulnerable and diminished.

Thus, Europeans have chosen a third route: to reconcile their values and beliefs by inventing a parallel reality. They continue to profess norms but apply them to an imaginary world in which Iran woke up one morning and attacked Israel and its Gulf neighbors—and therefore deserves condemnation. Worse, this approach is only possible because Europe’s reaction to war in the Middle East is largely irrelevant. Having played no role in crafting U.S. policy, Europe can more easily pretend that it is not responding to Iranian aggression. The E3 has agreed to work with the United States and Israel to intercept and destroy Iranian missiles, and the U.K. has allowed for the use of its military bases to that end. This puts Europe on the side of the aggressors but without any of the agency or influence this might otherwise entail.

There is something particularly tragic in this all unfolding over Iran. After all, the Iranian nuclear question was one of the rare instances in which Europeans delivered a principled yet realistic result. Just over a decade ago, the continent’s leading powers used their economic and diplomatic leverage to negotiate the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, thereby addressing a serious strategic threat without violating their values.

Trump ultimately destroyed that success. But European leaders could still have continued a more principled and effective course. They could have stated that this is a U.S. and Israeli war of choice in violation of the U.N. charter and defended their position in the U.N. Security Council. They could have rejected being pulled into hostilities by Washington and instead formed a coalition of the willing with regional actors to pursue a diplomatic solution. However unlikely the chances for success, this policy would have, at worst, preserved Europe’s integrity, and at best, advanced its interests.

This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage. Read more here.