Former U.S. ambassador to NATO Kurt Volker warned European nations against criticizing President Trump’s military operations against Iran.
“You might think that this is a huge folly and going to have terrible consequences, but you don’t have to say it,” Volker said on the Friday episode of Politico’s “EU Confidential” podcast.
“By saying it, you alienate Donald Trump and you run the risk that he will then link your unhappiness with his policies to his unhappiness for some of your policies,” he continued.
Volker represented the U.S. in NATO from 2008 to 2009, and he later served in the first Trump administration as a special representative to Ukraine.
He told Politico that European leaders have “ways to be proactive … without taking gratuitous shots at President Trump that don’t actually help.”
The current U.S. ambassador to NATO, Matt Whitaker, told Newsmax earlier this month that Trump was “reevaluating” the country’s membership in this international military alliance amid pushback from European allies about the U.S.’s strikes on Iran.
Several European leaders have voiced their concern or outright opposition after the U.S. and Israel launched a joint military operation on Tehran at the end of February. The conflict has stretched on for nearly 56 days, as of Friday evening.
The leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany strongly urged the two sides to return to the negotiation table to figure out a nuclear agreement after the outbreak in fighting.
The strikes have even drawn opposition from some of Trump’s closest European allies, including Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
The Italian head of state strongly condemned an attack on an Iranian elementary school, which killed 175 people. Officials told The New York Times that the strike was a result of a targeting error of the U.S. military — a report the Pentagon declined to confirm.
Earlier this month, the U.K. and France chaired a global summit on the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz during the conflict. Around a fifth of the world’s oil consumption flows through the critical waterway on a daily basis under typical conditions.
The two European countries convened 51 countries in Paris last Friday to discuss a “strictly defensive” approach to securing the free movement of commerce through the major trading corridor.
Trump has maintained a naval blockade in the strait during an indefinite ceasefire period with Iran, blocking Iranian ports and stopping some ships from traveling through the waterway. The U.S. navy is also conducting de-mining operations in the strait during the halt in fighting to remove threats to ships traveling through.
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