PEDRO Sanchez has hit back at Donald Trump after the US president made an unprecedented threat to cut off all trade with Spain over the government’s refusal to support ongoing American strikes on Iran.
“The position of the government of Spain in the face of this situation is clear and consistent, the same one we have maintained in Ukraine and Gaza,” the Spanish prime minister said in a ten-minute televised address.
“No to the collapse of an international law that protects us all, especially civilians. No to assuming that the world can only solve its problems through bombs. Let us not repeat the mistakes of the past. No to war.”
Sanchez was forced into delivering the strong rebuttal from the prime minister’s residence at La Moncloa after relations between Spain and the United States plummeted to an all-time low on Tuesday evening.
The US president praised the German chancellor Friedrich Merz and NATO secretary-general Mark Rutte at a pool spray in the White House before lashing out at Spain, who he described as a ‘terrible’ ally.
He also made a thinly-veiled threat to ‘fly in and use’ two jointly-operated air bases in Andalucia for operations in the Middle East even though Spain exercised a veto.
He said: “Spain, first of all, it started when every European nation at my request paid 5 per cent [of GDP on defence] which they should be doing, and everybody was enthusiastic about it, Germany, everybody, and Spain didn’t do it.
“And now Spain actually said that we can’t use their bases, and that’s alright, we don’t want to, we can use their base if we want, we can just fly in and use it.
“Nobody’s gonna tell us not to use it, but we don’t have to, but they were unfriendly and so I told them Spain has absolutely nothing that we need, other than great people, they have great people, but they don’t have great leadership.
“As you know they were the only country in NATO that would not agree to go up to 5 per cent. I don’t think they wanted to agree to go up to anything, they wanted to keep it at 2 per cent and they don’t pay the 2 per cent.
“So we’re gonna cut off all trade with Spain, we don’t want anything to do with Spain.”
READ MORE: WATCH: Trump threatens to ‘fly in and use’ air bases in Andalucia to bomb Iran despite Spain veto
Sanchez also used his speech on Wednesday morning to remind Spaniards of the early-2000s and make a jibe at Jose Maria Aznar, the former Partido Popular (PP) prime minister, who dragged Spain into the Iraq war.
He said: “The world has been here before. 23 years ago, another US administration led us into an unjust war.
“The Iraq war generated a drastic increase in terrorism and a serious migration and economic crisis. That was the gift of the Azores trio [referring to a now-infamous meeting before the war between Aznar, US president George W. Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair]: a more insecure world and a worse life.”
“Some will say that is naive. What is naive is thinking that the solution is violence, or thinking that blind and servile followership amounts to leadership.
“We are not going to be complicit in something that is bad for the world out of fear of retaliation from anyone,” he added in a clear reference to Trump’s threats to cut off trade relations.
The Spanish premier also insisted that Spain was not alone, even though it has positioned itself the furthest away from the US of any European Union country.
He said: “We are not alone. The government stands where it must stand, with the values of the Constitution, of the EU, with the UN Charter, with peace. Millions of people around the world stand with peace and prosperity.
“No one is in favour of the ayatollahs. But the question is whether we stand on the side of international legality and peace. We repudiate the regime in Tehran, but we call for a diplomatic solution.”
Sanchez also sought to offer reassurances that the government would do its best to protect Spaniards from the economic shocks of the ongoing conflict, which is expected to lead to a spike in petrol prices and energy bills with millions of barrels of oil unable to pass through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital narrow shipping lane between Iran and Oman.
“We are going to protect Spaniards. We are arranging evacuation mechanisms and we will protect our compatriots,” he said.
“We are studying ways to mitigate the economic impact. We have the capacity and the political will – we did it during the pandemic.”
The collapse in diplomatic relations came after US military planes were forced to leave Andalucia over the weekend after the Spanish government blocked the use of its bases for strikes on Iran.
Flight tracking websites showed fifteen US aircraft departing Rota and Moron in southern Spain after foreign minister Jose Manuel Albares said that the bases could not be used for ongoing military operations in the Middle East.
READ MORE: Expect petrol prices at the pump to go up as the war in Iran pushes crude up 10% in just one morning
Rota and Moron, in Cadiz and Sevilla respectively, are jointly operated with the US, but fall under Spain’s sovereignty.
The development came after senior officials, including Albares and prime minister Sanchez, decried the US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which have led to the death of the supreme leader, as ‘unjustified’ and ‘dangerous’.
Speaking at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona on Sunday, Sanchez called for an ‘immediate de-escalation’ after branding the attack ‘unilateral’ and ‘against international law’.
“It is possible to be against a hateful regime, as Spanish society as a whole is against the Iranian regime, and at the same time be against an unjustified, dangerous military intervention that is outside international law,” Sanchez said.
The remarks came after strikes by US-Israeli forces on Saturday killed Iran’s longtime ruler, Ayatollah Khamenei.
The conflict quickly spilled over into neighbouring countries in the Middle East, with retaliatory strikes from Tehran targeting Israel, Oman, Qatar, the UAE, Bahrain, Jordan and Cyprus.
Spain was joined by a handful of EU countries – including Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Slovenia – in criticising the war, while France, Italy and Germany publicly backed military action against Iran.
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