Iran has made an extraordinary offer, and it went straight to Madrid. The Iranian embassy in Spain announced Thursday that Tehran would be "receptive to any request from Madrid" regarding the Strait of Hormuz, citing Spain's respect for international law.
Pedro Sánchez © Mena Today
Iran has made an extraordinary offer, and it went straight to Madrid. The Iranian embassy in Spain announced Thursday that Tehran would be "receptive to any request from Madrid" regarding the Strait of Hormuz, citing Spain's respect for international law.
It is the first such concession offered to any EU member state.
The reason is no mystery. Pedro Sánchez has made Spain the only European country to openly condemn the military operation against Iran, denouncing it as "reckless and illegal." Tehran knows exactly what it is doing, rewarding its most vocal European defender with a diplomatic favour that costs nothing and buys considerable goodwill.
Sánchez's indulgence toward Iran is part of a broader, deeply troubling pattern. Since the Hamas massacres of October 7, 2023 - in which 1,200 Israeli civilians were slaughtered - Sánchez and his far-left coalition partners have relentlessly targeted Israel with accusations that frequently cross the line into antisemitism.
His foreign minister has been no better. Meanwhile, the tens of thousands of Iranian civilians massacred by the regime's own enforcers barely register a mention from Madrid.
For Sánchez, it seems, not all civilian lives carry equal weight.
Playing Tehran's Game
Iran has shrewdly identified Spain as its gateway into European legitimacy. By singling out Madrid for this diplomatic concession, Tehran is rewarding Sánchez's anti-American, anti-Israel posturing, and encouraging more of it. In return, Spain lends the Iranian regime a veneer of international respectability it desperately needs.
This is not principled diplomacy. It is political opportunism dressed up as moral courage.
Nobody's Buying It at Home
The darkest irony is that Pedro Sánchez's radical foreign policy adventures are not even popular in Spain. He remains deeply unpopular at home, propped up by far-left allies whose agenda he faithfully serves. His Middle East grandstanding impresses no one in Madrid, but it plays beautifully in Tehran.
Spain deserves better than a prime minister who trades in moral outrage against democracies while offering diplomatic cover to one of the world's most brutal theocracies.
Israel has had friends in the White House before. Harry Truman recognized the Jewish state at its birth. Richard Nixon understood during the Yom Kippur War that delay could be fatal. Those were consequential acts, and history rightly honors them.
Lebanese hotels are no longer safe hiding spots for members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and the country's hoteliers are making sure of it.
Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi movement, whose attacks on the Red Sea caused international shipping and trade chaos during the Gaza war, stands ready to strike the key waterway again in solidarity with Tehran, one Houthi leader told Reuters, a move that would deepen a global oil and economic crisis brought on by the Middle East war.
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