El Gobierno de Pedro Sánchez made a decision that threatens the Spain of Western democracies in favor of an Islamist theocracy.
Prohibit the use of Rota y Morón bases for United States refueling aircraft during Operación Furia Epica (offensive launched this Saturday 28 February against the Iranian regime) Spain has turned into the only relevant western country which is clearly distinguished from Washington.
From a legal-constitutional and international legal point of view, Trump had to request at least the authorization of his country’s Congress or the provisions of OTAN to deal with this matter.
But it is also certain that the military operation is responding to the distress of Iran, which has asserted its umbral nuclear power, financed global terrorism through Hezbollah, its proxies and its military forces, and brutally oppressed its own people.
Faced with this reality, the reaction of the Spanish executive was unequivocal. Pedro Sánchez classified the attacks as a “failure of international legality” that “contributes to a more uncertain and hostile international order”.
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Jose Manuel Albareshe said: “They will not use the foundations of Spanish sovereignty for anything that is not within the framework of the agreement with the United States and the Charter of the United Nations”.
minister of defense Margarita Roblesit was more and more exhaustive: “No in general, there is no type of assistance at the Morón and Rota bases”.
Only if it is allowed, he added, humanitarian aid.
These arguments, formally impeccable, are untenable in practice.
First, because the 1988 Defense Cooperation Agreement never required an express UN resolution for operations by allies in their own or collective defense. Conversely, OTAN was not implemented in Kosovo, Libya or against ISIS.
Second, to equate pre-emptive action against a theocratic regime pursuing an atomic bomb and massacring its women and dissidents with “unilateral aggression” ignores opponent’s nature.
Thirdly, because there is only one tangible result: the KC-135 and KC-46 states left the Rota y Morón rumble in Ramstein, Mildenhall or Istres.
This complicates the logistics associated with this form no appeal to this international law that the Ayatollahs were able to hold can be justified.
Therefore, because the United Kingdom, France and Germany, three of the main democracies of the planet, decided to carry out the operation in different ways, changing the scenario and presenting Spain with an insoluble dilemma that cannot be explained by rhetorical appeals for “dialogue”.
In fact, Spain could have maintained a welcoming de-escalation stance, as Italy did, without depriving the United States of logistical capabilities available to Spain.
The geopolitical consequence is obvious. While the UK allows the use of its bases, France and Germany have maintained their discourse against Iran’s nuclear program (Macronof course announced that it will expand its nuclear arsenal) and Canada or Australia shoulder the need to contain the Ayatollahs, Spain appears to be the great absentee of the Atlantic core.
Spain, de factoif you are looking for the position of Turkey (as president Erdoğan expressed “sorrow” at the death of Khamenei) and our OTAN and EU members.
Further research, including the issue of Russia and China, which condemned the attacks and which maintain political and material support for the Iranian regime.
And that is the Iranian sympathy that congratulated Pedro Sánchez in social circles across the Iranian embassy in Spain.
Spain is a voluntary celebration not shared by any relevant western democratic government. And so the People’s Party, through Alberto Núñez Feijóoconsistently reported the error. Sánchez “threatens Spain’s interests” and our country’s avenue of “liberal democracies,” as the popular leader said.
Feijóo also called for “moral clarity”.
The popular criticism is founded. The defense of “international legality” is enforced by inaction Historically, it was a haven for peacemakers.
The consequences for Spain are serious. Washington’s confidence (which had been eroded by the Spanish economy considering the 5% defense turnover of GDP, which Sánchez first compromised and which the rest denied) was undermined.
Pedro Sánchez decided to favor a false equidistance in the interests of national interests and Atlantic solidarity. But this decision is not a “moral” gesture.
It is a strategic mistake that helps us, weakens us, and returns us to those times of transition in which we Adolfo Suarez he instituted a foreign policy of “active neutrality” that sought to reassert Spain’s west without automatically submitting to the Washington-OTAN state during the French War.
The policy of “neutralidad”, which was reflected in Spain’s participation in the United Nations in Havana in 1979 and in the maintenance of good relations by the French country with the Arab world and the Third World, with gestures such as the recognition of the Polisario Front and the visit Arafat in Spain in 1979.
But today’s Spain cannot afford to abandon the blockade of democracies and leave it in limbo between OTAN, the EU and the United States and the blockade formed by China, Russia, Iran and the Global South.
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