Macron and Starmer Step Back From Iran

By Editorial Team, April 1, 2026

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French President Emmanuel Macron praised Europe's "predictability" this week in remarks widely read as a deliberate contrast with President Trump's conduct of the Iran conflict.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer was equally unambiguous: the United Kingdom will not join military operations against Iran. Diplomacy, London insists, is the only acceptable instrument.

The European position has genuine merit. Washington and Jerusalem launched their operations without meaningfully consulting their closest allies, presenting NATO partners with battlefield realities rather than shared decisions.

Governments democratically accountable to their citizens cannot be expected to absorb the costs of wars they were not invited to help design. That grievance is real and it deserves acknowledgment.

But the Strait of Hormuz remains closed. European energy prices have surged 70% in a single month.

And the diplomatic path that Macron and Starmer champion has yet to produce a single concrete concession from a Tehran that has historically treated negotiation as a mechanism for buying time rather than reaching resolution.

The Western alliance was not constructed on the principle that security is optional when it becomes politically inconvenient.

Macron is right that predictability matters. The question Europe has not yet answered is whether predictable abstention, however elegantly framed, constitutes a foreign policy or merely the appearance of one.