It’s not their war. But it’s becoming their political and economic nightmare.
World leaders who opposed the US-Israeli attack on Iran are being torn between Donald Trump’s ire at their failure to join the conflict and electorates who are deeply hostile to the war and America’s president.
Their dilemma is shifting the dynamic between the US and its allies. Leaders who once tried to appease and flatter the world’s most powerful man are now daring to criticize him and seeking distance. They are doing so not just out of antipathy to American foreign policy, but also because of war-related pressures threatening the livelihoods of their people, and therefore their own governments and careers.
Even leaders who tried to shape Trump’s second-term behavior are reacting to his contempt. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Monday said Trump’s attacks on on Pope Leo XIV were “unacceptable.” British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, whose friendship with Trump shattered over the war, said last week he was “fed up” that Britons were facing higher energy bills because of Trump’s actions.
Relations between Trump and Starmer took another turn for the worse on Wednesday. The president hinted in an interview with Sky News that he could try to change terms of a trade deal that is a huge priority for the British government.
Starmer however insisted that he would not pushed into joining the war on Iran. “I’m not going to change my mind. I’m not going to yield. It is not in our national interest to join this war, and we will not do so. I know where I stand,” the British leader told parliament.
Leaders are reacting to war consequences they can’t control, epitomized by an International Monetary Fund warning Tuesday that the world is trending toward an “adverse” scenario of only 2.5% growth this year, down from 3.4% in 2025.
Countries reliant on Middle East gas and oil supplies could fare worse. The IMF downgraded its growth forecast for Britain to 0.8% in 2026, down from a previous projection of 1.3%. That would be a disaster for Starmer’s imperiled government, which has failed to honor its pledge to reignite the economy.
Another key US ally, Japan, is also under duress because it relies on Middle Eastern energy. Higher shipping costs are pushing prices higher and threatening a modest rise in wages. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi never expected to face such headwinds soon after her historic election victory in February.
Even before the Iran war, Trump was deeply unpopular in many allied nations. A Pew Research survey last year showed the president’s approval ratings in more than a dozen countries at 35% or below. His approval was higher than former President Joe Biden in only a few countries, including Israel and Nigeria.
The disconnect does not merely represent a breach that will last through the rest of the Trump administration. It threatens the alliances that multiplied US political and economic power for decades. Trump’s antipathy to NATO, meanwhile, has left its mutual defense guarantees looking shaky even if he doesn’t decide to withdraw the US altogether.
The Trump White House has made clear in its rhetoric and foreign policy documents that it sees the application of US unilateral power as the best way to protect US interests in the 21st century. The president seems to regard NATO not as a defensive alliance but as a tool for him to advance his foreign policy interests — for instance in a war of choice in Iran. He has little tolerance for allies that rely on the US defense umbrella but refuse to join his wars.
But signing up to fight is politically impossible for many allied leaders. They face electorates that view the Iran war as unwise, unlikely to succeed and an infringement of international law. Trump’s disparagement of heavy allied war losses in the post 9/11 wars only deepened their voters’ antipathy to the president.
How the war strained a key Trump relationship with Europe
The IMF forecasts made clear that the Iran conflict is more than a distant foreign policy crisis for allied governments. It has become a domestic and political threat. This, combined with growing antagonism between allied leaders and the US president, means that standing with him would be a liability.
Italy’s Meloni leads a populist, right-wing party, and is one of the European leaders most ideologically compatible with Trump. She had therefore positioned herself as a bridge between the White House and European allies. But her own popularity has been hit by war-induced fuel price rises.
Meloni also has a unique role in a nation that has more than 40 million Roman Catholics and a special relationship with the Vatican. She therefore had no real political choice but to criticize Trump’s attacks on the Pope. But her shift may have ruined more than a year of painful diplomacy and relationship-building.
“I’m shocked by her. I thought she had courage. I was wrong,” Trump was quoted as saying by the Italian-language Corriere della Sera in an interview. “She is the one who is unacceptable, because she does not care whether Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow Italy up in two minutes if it had the chance.”
Meloni is learning what it’s like to be on the end of a verbal Trump barrage. That was already part of life for leaders in Canada, where the challenge of dealing with Trump has transformed domestic politics. Were it not for Trump, it’s unlikely that Prime Minister Mark Carney — a former central banker and political outsider — would even be in the job. But his election victory last year on an anti-Trump platform followed the president’s attacks on Canadian sovereignty.
On Monday, Carney solidified his mandate and turned a minority administration into a majority government following two special election wins and several defections from opposition parties. At his Liberal Party convention this month, he alluded to Trump’s expansionist designs. “United, we will build Canada strong, a Canada for all, a Canada strong that no one can ever take away,” he said.
Carney has made a fateful choice. While he hopes to work with the US, his foundation of power is confirmed by an electoral mandate and rests on a foundation of resistance to Trump. He’s therefore in better shape politically than many other allied leaders. But his popularity will still be tested by factors he can’t fully control, such as war-related economic damage; US tariffs; and what is looming as a bitter renegotiation of a North American trade agreement.
Trump was once seen as a hero for European populists, many of whom assumed his reelection on a harsh anti-immigration stance predicted their own political rise. That all changed in Hungary this weekend. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and the MAGA movement campaigned for populist strongman Viktor Orbán as though he were a GOP senator in a swing state. But stunning general election results ousted Orban after 16 years in power.
The defeat is likely to accelerate a trend of populist leaders in Europe distancing themselves from MAGA for their own political good.
The paradox caused by Trump’s pressure on allied leaders
Trump seems to believe he’s popular abroad and argues that his displays of American power have made the United States more feared and respected than ever as the "hottes" nation on the planet.
Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the tip of the spear of Trump’s trade wars with allied nations, on Tuesday sought to minimize the impact of the Iran war on non-combatant nations, saying that the IMF “probably overreacted.”
European leaders might be becoming more overt in their criticisms of Trump. But they have only so much rope. Their positions are frequently undercut by their greatest liability in relations with the US — their weakened militaries.
When Trump complained that NATO allies didn’t send ships to open the Strait of Hormuz, he hit a sore point. It was not just that allied leaders didn’t have the political backing to do so: Non-US NATO powers probably don’t have the capability anymore to pull off such a mission after years of defense cuts.
When Trump mulls withdrawing from NATO, he is playing a significant card: Serious rearmaments in Europe could break governments because of the unpopular cuts in health and social programs they would entail.
So even as they turn on Trump for their own political preservation, his estranged European counterparts cannot risk a total break with the United States.
But the more the president demands their entry into an unpopular war, the less political room they have to help him end it.
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