Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has responded to Donald Trump’s extraordinary threat to cut all trade with Spain over his government’s refusal to facilitate continued US attacks on Iran, comparing the growing conflict in the Middle East to playing “Russian roulette with the fate of millions.”
Sánchez, who has been one of the staunchest European critics of Israel’s conduct in Gaza, said his government’s position in the face of growing instability could be summed up in three words: “No to war.”
In a section of the speech that appeared to directly address Trump’s threats to end all trade with Spain, the prime minister said his country “will not be complicit in something that is bad for the world – and that is also contrary to our values and interests – simply because of fear of retaliation from someone.”
On Tuesday, Trump lashed out at Madrid for denying the United States permission to use jointly operated bases in southern Spain to continue its attacks on Iran. “Spain has been terrible,” Trump said during a meeting with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, adding that he had told Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “cut all deals” with the European country.
In his speech on Wednesday, Sánchez called on the United States, Israel and Iran to stop their war before it was too late, saying: “You cannot respond to one illegality with another because this is how the great disasters of humanity begin.”
He added: “You cannot play Russian roulette with the fate of millions… No one knows for sure what will happen now. Even the objectives of those who launched the first attack are not clear. But we must be prepared, as the proponents say, for the possibility that this will be a long war, with many casualties and, therefore, with serious economic consequences on a global scale.”
He pointedly invoked the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which was supported by his conservative predecessor José María Aznar, as a warning of the dangers to come. Sánchez said that while that war was ostensibly aimed at “eliminating Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, bringing democracy and guaranteeing global security,” it had instead “unleashed the greatest wave of insecurity our continent has suffered since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
Sánchez said that the main responsibility of a government was to protect and improve the lives of its citizens, and not to use geopolitics for cynical purposes or to profit from war. “It is absolutely unacceptable that those leaders who are incapable of fulfilling this duty use the smokescreen of war to hide their failure and, in the process, line the pockets of a select few, the same ones as always; the only ones who benefit when the world stops building hospitals and starts building missiles,” he said.
During his meeting with Merz, Trump again criticized Spain for refusing to accept NATO’s proposal that member states increase their defense spending to 5% of their GDP. “Everyone was excited about it – Germany, everyone – and Spain didn’t do it,” Trump said. “And now Spain said we can’t use their bases, and that’s fine. We could use their bases; if we wanted to, we could just fly up and use them (sic). Nobody is going to tell us not to use them. But we don’t have to. But they were hostile.”
Merz later said he had told Trump privately that Spain could not be excluded from the trade deal reached between Brussels and Washington last year. “I said that Spain is a member of the European Union and we negotiate on tariffs with the United States only together or we do not negotiate at all,” he said. “There is no way to treat Spain especially badly.”
Spain’s position has also been defended by the European Commission, which said: “The commission will ensure that the interests of the European Union are fully protected. We stand in full solidarity with all Member States and all their citizens and, through our common commercial policy, we are ready to act if necessary to safeguard the interests of the EU.”
Teresa Ribera, a former Spanish deputy prime minister who serves as the EU’s green transition chief, said the EU’s foreign trade was negotiated as a bloc and the commission was the relevant authority on the issue. “At this moment, it is not possible to establish trade retaliation or separate trade relations… I think the most surprising thing about this fact is that the US federal government is aware of it,” he told Spain’s Cadena Ser radio on Wednesday.
