On Sunday, Starmer, Macron and Merz issued a statement threatening Iran with use of military force to preemptively defend their interests. The day before, they had issued another statement, condemning Iran for reacting to the Israeli-US attack. No words of critique on the latter.
The Sunday statement says:
“E3 leaders are appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial US and Israeli military operations. Iran’s reckless attacks have targeted our close allies and are threatening our service personnel and our civilians across the region.
“We call on Iran to stop these reckless attacks immediately. We will take steps to defend our interests and those of our allies in the region, potentially through enabling necessary and proportionate defensive action to destroy Iran’s capability to fire missiles and drones at their source.