After Trump said “Spain has been terrible” and announced trade cuts with the country, Sánchez criticises US and Israeli strikes and defends a “diplomatic and political” solution.
Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez said on Wednesday that he is against the war in the Middle East triggered by US and Israeli strikes on Iran and that he will not change his position “simply out of fear of reprisals.”
“We repudiate the Iranian regime, which represses and vilely kills its own citizens, especially women, but at the same time we also reject the conflict and call for a diplomatic and political solution,” Sánchez said in a statement broadcast on social media and television from the seat of the Spanish government in Madrid.
Spain’s position “is not naive, it is consistent,” he said, adding that it mirrors the stance his government has taken on Ukraine, Gaza, Greenland and Venezuela. He stressed that the strikes on Iran and the Tehran regime’s response breach international law and the United Nations Charter.
“It is naive to believe that democracies and respect between nations grow from ruins, or to think that blind and servile followership is a form of leadership. Our position is not naive — on the contrary, it is consistent. We will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world and contrary to our interests simply out of fear of reprisals from someone,” he added.
Sánchez made the statement after criticism and threats directed at the Spanish government by US president Donald Trump on Tuesday.
“Spain has been terrible. We’re going to cut all trade with Spain. We don’t want anything to do with Spain,” Trump said.
Spain refused to allow the US to use the military bases of Rota and Morón, in the south of the country, for operations related to the strikes on Iran launched on Saturday, which led the Americans to move the aerial refuelling tankers they had stationed on Spanish soil to bases in other European countries.
Read more about this topic: US at war with Iran: experts warn of billion-dollar costs and risk of weapon shortages
Beyond Spain’s stance on the Iran strikes, Trump today also criticised the Spanish government’s refusal to raise its defence budget to 5% of GDP, as other NATO member states have been asked to do.
