In the West, governments are busy lamenting the ruins of international law. (And Chancellor Merz is right: “international law protects Iran.") The rest of the time, they aare busy discussing threatened regional stability and the price of hydrocarbons. We even have prime ministers (Keir Starmer) who tell Trump to “dialogue with Iran".
This is the inalienable privilege of Western democracy.
But this is a flabby democracy, held up by politicians in silk underwear who tremble at the idea of getting their hands dirty. The real luxury is always the same: being able to hate Netanyahu and Trump as if they were the devil with a red tie, while turning a blind eye-indeed both eyes-to a regime that hangs innocents from cranes, stones and massacres teenagers who dare shout “freedom," enriches uranium to 60 percent and manufactures missiles that can reach the white cliffs of Dover.
Europeans are masters of a well-practiced art of balance: denounce with emphasis whatever comes from Tel Aviv or Washington, and wrap Tehran in the reassuring mists of “dialogue" and “de-escalation".
They scream hysterically for an Israeli missile that hits a Hezbollah hideout disguised as a school (because terrorists love children as human shields), but when Tehran hangs a dissident they whisper: “Let’s not judge different cultures".
Iranians cannot afford this luxury. They have Evin prison, gallows erected at dawn, and night burials.
In 1991, the image of the “Highway of Death"-Saddam Hussein’s army of criminals bombed while fleeing Kuwait-shocked Western public opinion and pushed for the immediate cessation of fighting in Iraq and Kuwait. The result was that Saddam Hussein’s air force and Republican Guard divisions were spared; during the “peace" that followed, those troops massacred Kurds and Shiites.
In 1993, the photograph of a dead American soldier dragged through the streets of Mogadishu after the “Black Hawk Down" incident pushed Bill Clinton to order a shameful withdrawal from Somalia.
A helicopter shot down, a corpse dragged through the streets in underwear, and Clinton packing up from Somalia like a thief caught in the act. From then on Americans understood: better not get involved, better not get their hands dirty, better let the chaos cooked by others simmer slowly.
Robert Kagan coined the phrase: “Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus." And from time to time Americans remember where they come from.
“Well, gentlemen, when the s*** hits the fan some guys run and some guys stay," says Al Pacino in “Scent of a Woman."
Americans and Israelis are like all Westerners, people who enjoy vacations and retire as soon as possible. With the difference that when the s*** hits the fan they are the only ones who stand firm.
When in 2014 the Americans were busy bombing ISIS in Iraq and Syria, what did Europe do? It invoked “international law" to justify its refusal.
Yohan Gross, a thirty-year-old mathematics professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told the Telegraph:
“As Israelis, we feel we are doing the dirty work Europe does not want to do. British and European governments prefer to wait and see, to be diplomatic and handle things diplomatically. But that does not always work, especially with Islamists. We do the dirty work because we are on the front line and have no choice. It is absurd that we are criticized for it, especially because Europe can enjoy the fruits of everything we are doing here."
In 2004, al-Qaeda managed for the first time to carry out a regime change in Europe after perpetrating the terrorist atrocities of the Madrid train bombings. Spain, after the Atocha massacres, turned mourning into an anti-American referendum and fled Iraq with its tail between its legs; since then it has disappeared from the map of serious geopolitics.
German media were shocked by the revelation that the German air force would be under attack during a potential mission in Syria against ISIS. “Putting German soldiers in danger!"-with an exclamation point-wrote Bild, Germany’s best-selling newspaper. The statement highlighted the anxiety of what John Vinocur of the Wall Street Journal called “a country where the army and air force basically do not fight."
Because of the war against Tehran, thousands of European citizens are stranded in the Middle East. Alongside all the heartbreaking videos of citizens and influencers in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, news channels broadcast moving accounts about this new type of victim: tourists stuck in a conflict zone, outraged at being “abandoned." And when they finally arrive in Rome and Paris, microphones are placed in front of them to capture their ordeal.
Westerners suddenly discover, with belated horror, that the world is not an Airbnb catalogue and that history does not pause to let us check out.
And they can only hope that the wind does not change direction too quickly. Because at that point, opening the window tot escape will not be enough.