Trump's Iran war widens rift with European nationalists
BUDAPEST
When President Donald Trump returned to the White House last year, he was eager to pick up where he left off by strengthening ties with Europe's right wing.
But now many of those same factions are expressing open revulsion at the Iran war, rupturing relationships that were supposed to usher in a new international order.
Although Vice President JD Vance campaigned for Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán this week, such a display has become the exception rather than the rule among conservatives and far-right leaders in Europe.
Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni refused to let the United States use an air base in Sicily to launch attacks on Iran. France’s National Rally leader Marine Le Pen described his war goals as “erratic." And the head of Germany’s Alternative for Germany party called for American troops to leave their bases in the country.
Even with a fragile ceasefire in place with Iran, Trump's support for Orbán may not work out for the autocratic Hungarian leader, who faces a tough election this weekend. He's long been an icon for the global right and many American conservatives who have hoped the Trump administration could replicate the Hungarian leader’s effort to choke off immigration and restructure government to ensure his Fidesz party stays in power.
That longstanding connection could insulate Orbán from some of the anti-Trump blowback rattling the rest of Europe, but that's not guaranteed, said Charles Kupchan, a professor of international relations at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.
“Getting a blessing from Donald Trump is now a mixed blessing,” he said.
The backlash over the war follows European broad revulsion at Trump's threats earlier this year against NATO ally Denmark over his demand that the country give Greenland to the United States.
Trump tied the two issues together on April 8, complaining that NATO didn't help more in recent weeks.
“NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN,” he wrote on social media, after a closed-door meeting with alliance chief Mark Rutte.
"REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!" he added, without any further explanation.
Trump president has branded NATO a "paper tiger" for refusing to lead efforts to open the strategic Strait of Hormuz and for limiting U.S. forces from using bases on their territories.
"It was a very frank, it was a very open discussion," Rutte later told CNN in a televised interview.
Asked multiple times if Trump had said if he would leave the alliance, Rutte did not answer directly.
Daniel Baer, a former ambassador and State Department official in President Barack Obama's administration, said the latest round of tension with Europe's far right shows the limits of Trump's hope of helping nationalist leaders worldwide.
“Building some sort of international coalition around national chauvinism is very difficult,” said Baer, now with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace. “It's clear the majority of people in these countries, if not anti-American, have turned anti-Trump.”
Kupchan said most European far-right parties have established political staying power independent of any American influence, and may not have an incentive to go along with Trump's agenda.
“Trump's effort to create a transnational movement of far-right populists may affect the margins, but the main reason you're seeing Reform U.K. and AfD and National Rally and other far-right parties prosper has little to do with Trump and more to do with national factors,” he said.