Featured Image Credit: YouTube/Channel 4 News
Topics: Spain, Donald Trump
William Morgan
A top government official in Spain has shared his country's forthright opinion of President Trump and Israel's war on Iran, after his European nation became one of America's most vocal western critics over the act of aggression.
Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture, told Channel 4 News yesterday that America's allies 'need to say "no", need to say "stop"' and said it was 'completely useless' to appeal to Trump, after this week's war of words between the president and Spain's Pedro Sanchez.
The Prime Minister sparked Trump's fury after he refused to get on side with the war and said publicly: "We will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world and that is also contrary to our values and interests simply out of fear of reprisals from someone."
This led to the president threatening to treat the NATO ally as he does rogue state actors. Speaking in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Trump said that 'Spain has been terrible' before revealing that he had already directed the Treasury to 'cut off all dealings with Spain'.
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But despite these threats from the leader of the most-powerful military and economy in the world, the Spanish government has not erred in its decision to oppose the war.
This would, perhaps, be unsurprising to anyone who paid attention to Spain's foreign policy during Israel's war on Gaza, when Sanchez's government backed aid flotillas that attempted to break Israel's blockade of the Palestinian territory.
Throughout, Spain cited international humanitarian law, something the Minister of Culture reiterated on Thursday night when he told Channel 4: "I think theres a moment where democratic countries who believe in international law and multilateralism have to stand up, there's no other choice."
Urtasun made clear his country's view that letting America and Israel flout binding international agreements that they expect others to follow would be a slippery slope. He even questioned what world the Trump administration is trying to build.
He added: "If we just accept, one after another, all the vulnerations and dismissals of international law, what kind of world are we going to build in the 21st Century?"
Urtasan then went further, arguing that other Western countries needed to step in to stop the bloodshed, saying: "At a certain point we have to say 'no', we have to say 'stop'."
He also had harsh words for those world leaders that try to appease Donald Trump's vanity, saying: "Theres a growing sense at an EU level that its completely useless to continue appealing to Donald Trump's vanity or personal interests.
"You cannot accept to play down your own values and your own interests just because you want to please Donald Trump."
And Spain is not the only European country that is attempting to put the brakes on this conflict escalating, even the UK had to be dragged to the table by the US, eventually allowing the Air Force to fly bombing sorties from American bases on British soil after initially refusing.
The minister said: "Like the UK, in Spain, there's a very strong memory with what happened with the illegal war of aggression to Iraq in 2004. We learned from that lesson and we're not going to make that mistake again."
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has also showed no sign of backing down, summarizing his position simply on Wednesday as being 'no to war', after Trump repeatedly slammed his country in the Oval Office.
"Spain has been terrible," he said to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz on Tuesday. "We're going to cut off all trade with Spain. We don't want anything to do with Spain," Trump added.
But Sanchez responded in a national address: "The question is not if we are on the side of the ayatollahs - nobody is. The question is whether we are in favour of peace and international legality.
"You cannot answer one illegality with another, because that is how the great catastrophes of humanity begin."