Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me, I'm Susanna Munchank and Jack Smith.

Today we will talk about how Europe is getting dragged into the Iran war.

Initially skeptic, the European leaders or the leaders of the large European countries have warmed up to the idea

of this war itself and are supporting Trump.

Friedrich Mertz visited Washington yesterday and gave his full and unqualified support to the

operation.

The UK was initially very critical.

Stama was initially refusing or denying the US the right

to use UK air bases, but that position has since shifted. And France last night performed a big

U-turn. Susanna, tell us what happened. Yeah, it was probably to be seen in this context that

a day before Emmanuel Macron went on to redefine the nuclear deterrence strategy for France and thinking about how this could be enlarged for Europe.

And he did that in a very balanced approach, a very balanced, but very statement-like, very solemn.

And yesterday, he went on television to make a very short intervention to address the

French role in the war from the EADS and Israel war with Iran.

And what was interesting that, on the one hand, he criticized the intervention as against

international law, as did Petro Sanchez. On the other hand, he also said, well, no one will

mourn the loss of the Supreme Leader. And the fact that two of the military bases from the

French in the region have been attacked,

as well as Cyprus, was for him reason enough to say France will enter this conflict on a

purely defensive measure. We need to defend our assets in the region and we need to defend

the Allies. So when I heard first the Allies, I thought about NATO. Does he mean NATO because the UK

base has been attacked at US? Not only that, but he also was referring to, of course he was

...