Spain refuses to allow the US to use bases for attacks on Iran | military news

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, condemned the US and Israeli attacks against Iran.

Spain says that the United States is not using – nor will it use – joint military bases on its territory for operations against Iran, a mission condemned by Madrid.

“According to all the information I have, the bases are not being used for this military operation,” Foreign Minister José Manuel Albares told Spanish public television on Monday.

Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez condemned the US and Israeli attacks on Iran that began on Saturday as an “unjustified” and “dangerous” military intervention outside the scope of international law, in another break with US policy.

“The Spanish Government will not authorize the use of the bases for anything that goes beyond the agreement or is incompatible with the United Nations,” said Albares, referring to the Rota naval base and the Morón air base.

The United States operates the bases under a joint use agreement, but they remain under Spanish sovereignty.

Defense Minister Margarita Robles said the bases “will not provide support, except if, in a given case, it is necessary from a humanitarian perspective.”

Spain also condemned Iran’s retaliatory attacks against Gulf countries.

According to maps published Monday by the flight tracking website FlightRadar24, 15 American planes have left bases in southern Spain since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran. FlightRadar24 showed that at least seven of the planes had landed at Ramstein Air Base in Germany.

The Spanish position is an atypical case among the main European countries.

Britain had also initially refused to allow the use of its bases for an attack on Iran, but on Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorized their use for “collective self-defense,” amid Iranian counterattacks targeting US assets across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf region.

Meanwhile, France and Germany are willing to do the same.

The leaders of the three countries were “horrified by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those that did not participate in the initial US-Israeli military operations,” read a joint statement on Sunday.

“We have agreed to work together with the United States and its allies in the region on this matter,” they stated.