US war with Iran hints at limits of 'Make Europe Great Again' project, analysts say

LONDON -- President Donald Trump's announcement of a joint U.S.-Israeli surprise attack on Iran in February was met with little enthusiasm in Europe, where leaders were quick to warn of the political and economic turmoil that America's latest Middle East campaign would unleash.

Seven weeks on, no European nations have joined the U.S.-Israeli war, despite near-constant pressure from Trump to do so. Some European nations have allowed U.S. forces to continue using key military bases to launch attacks and have taken part in defensive operations to shoot down Iranian munitions targeting regional bases and nations.

But there appears to be little appetite for a full and open-ended entanglement with Iran among European voters, even those who support the nationalist, anti-establishment parties that have sought to align themselves with the second Trump White House.

The White House's explicit political support for populist challengers across Europe, which experts say would have been unthinkable under past administrations, has deeply unsettled European capitals.

The administration's latest National Security Strategy paper published in December explicitly stated the need for future U.S. foreign policy to include "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations." But in France, Germany, the U.K, Italy and elsewhere, the apparent poster children of the White House's combative transatlantic strategy have not aligned with it on Iran.

Leaders of many of those parties met at showpiece conferences in Belgium and Spain last year, the former titled, "Make Europe Great Again." There, key populist figures hailed "Hurricane Trump" and suggested that European right wingers could emulate elements of his administration's outlook and electoral success.

But European political realities are now stymying any grand ambitions of a transatlantic right-wing alliance, Liana Fix -- a senior fellow for Europe at the Council on Foreign Relations -- told ABC News.

"I do think that there was a significant amount of overestimation in that," Fix said.

European nations -- and the populist parties therein -- each have different relationships, interests and priorities regarding the U.S., Fix added. It is therefore difficult for the "America First" Trump administration and a collection of right-wing nationalist groups to form any coherent set of principles that could weather an international crisis like the Iran war.

"There is a small overlap on the issues of migration and conservative values, but that pretty much ends -- and there the interests diverge," Fix said.

European far-right politicians and their parties are not monolithic in ideology, ambitions or power. A handful are in government, but most are parliamentarians representing opposition parties. As they strive to win office, observers have suggested they will be primarily mindful of domestic voter sentiment. Analysts have noted also that Europe's reluctance to join wars, especially those in the Middle East, has been longstanding and bipartisan.

A group of experts at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank wrote in an analysis of the foreign policy of Europe's far-right challengers last summer that most are "traditionally anti-American, but most also want to ride the Trump wave -- and would prefer not to choose between those imperatives."

That anti-Americanism, Trump's liberal use of tariffs, staunch backing for U.S. tech giants in their showdowns with the EU and national governments, his ambitions to "take" Greenland and his repeated attacks on the EU and NATO are among the most pressing problems facing right-wing parties that might hope to piggyback on MAGA's momentum, experts have said.

Nationalist parties laser-focused on issues of sovereignty cannot be unquestioning allies of a muscular, interfering U.S. administration, Gregoire Roos of the Chatham House think tank in the U.K. told ABC News.

And for the Trump administration, Roos added, "The moment you say your ambition is to foster sovereignty, you cannot expect those whose sovereignty you're fostering or supporting to treat you with a special privilege."

"You cannot, on the one hand, advocate for sovereignty and on the other accept interference of foreign nations," he said. "They were expecting a kind of sovereignty a la carte -- that doesn't work like that."

ABC News has contacted the White House to request comment.

Shaky alliances

The war against Iran and the subsequent economic headwinds appear to be forming a potent transatlantic wedge issue.

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was the only European head of government invited to Trump's second inauguration. Trump has described Meloni as "beautiful" and a "great leader," and the Italian leader has been labelled "Europe's Trump whisperer" given her warm relationship with the president.

But Meloni was also clear in her opposition to the war against Iran. "When we don't agree, we must say it. And this time, we do not agree," she said of the operation during a visit to the Gulf region. Her words were accompanied by Rome's refusal to allow U.S. bombers to refuel at a military base in southern Italy.

Trump bristled at Meloni's opposition. "I haven't spoken to her in a long time," the president said of the Italian prime minister in an interview with Corriere della Sera last week. "She doesn't want to help us in the war. I thought she had courage. I was wrong."

"Losing Meloni is quite something," Roos said. "And now you see Le Pen, Farage trying to do their best to make the association with Trump less visible, less obvious than it used to be -- and therefore less politically toxic."

In France, National Rally (RN) leader Marine Le Pen -- behind whom both Trump and Vice President JD Vance threw their support in 2025 amid her embezzlement trial, in which she was eventually convicted -- told the Le Parisien newspaper that Trump "clearly did not fully appreciate the impact of his intervention" in Iran.

Though Le Pen initially endorsed the campaign in the opening days of the war, by March, she believed that the strikes "were carried out blindly" and prompted "catastrophic consequences." Le Pen told France Inter radio that Trump has expressed "erratic war goals" and made a mistake" by launching the operation.

British right-wing populist Nigel Farage, a member of parliament who heads the Reform party which is currently leading national opinion polls, also initially backed the U.S.-Israeli strikes. Britain, he said the day the war started on Feb. 28, must "back the Americans in this vital fight against Iran!"

But amid Trump's repeated criticisms of the U.K.'s failure to support the war, Farage -- who has described himself as a close friend of Trump and repeatedly appeared at campaign rallies for the president -- appeared to change tack within two weeks. "We don't have a navy" and "cannot get involved directly in another foreign war," Farage told a press conference in mid-March.

Vance stunned the European political establishment at the Munich Security Conference in 2025, accusing leaders of suppressing populist voices and dismissing voter concerns. A 30-minute meeting with the leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leader, Alice Weidel, during the event underlined his broadside to Europe and its collective liberal democratic project.

But Weidel and AfD chairman Tino Chrupalla said they were unimpressed with the U.S. decision to launch the war against Iran. "The renewed destabilization of the Middle East is not in Germany's interest and must be brought to an end," Weidel and Chrupalla said in a statement.

Chrupalla also in March restated to the Bild newspaper the AfD's long-term ambition that all 40,000 or so American troops stationed in Germany should be withdrawn.

The growing discord should, Fix said, come as little surprise given the Trump administration's broader approach to Europe.

The White House, she said, "is treating European allies as countries that should ideally pay for themselves, but follow the U.S. lead. And that's not going to change regardless of which government is in power."

"Right wing parties are at odds with each other across Europe," Fix said. "Right-wing parties in Europe are also nationalist, and they have a long and deep tradition of anti-Americanism."

"Even if Trump, most of his administration and events align with some of their values on migration and so on, that doesn't mean that this deep streak of anti-American anti-Americanism is going to disappear," she said.

The Budapest test

Last May, the Trump administration's European allies were reveling in their apparent momentum and touting a new era of cross-border coordination. Last summer's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) roadshow in Europe sought to showcase the budding coalition seeking coordination in rolling back the European Union project for which the president has shown such disdain.

At the CPAC event in Budapest, Hungary, Prime Minister Viktor Orban -- a totemic figure within European right-wing politics and a longtime Trump ally -- told attendees, "We have realized that if we want to defeat the progressive globalists, we must also think in an international framework."

But last week, Orban's 16-year run in power ended with a crushing defeat in Hungary's parliamentary election. A last-minute endorsement trip by Vance was not enough to derail the momentum of challenger Peter Magyar, nor was Vance's appeal for Hungarian voters to "stand with Viktor Orban, because he stands for you."

Orban's resounding defeat cannot be attributed to the war in Iran, an issue on which Orban -- who, in his opposition to EU and NATO support for Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia has cast himself as a pro-peace figure -- said relatively little.

But the failure of Vance's visit to Budapest could be interpreted as a signal of the White House's diminished influence on the continent, the experts who spoke to ABC News said, at least temporarily while its war with Iran drags on and the costs to Europeans rise.

Peter Kreko, the director of the Political Capital Institute in Budapest, told ABC News that foreign policy issues "really did not play an important role" in the seismic election that toppled Orban. Indeed, Kreko noted, the incumbent enjoyed significant political and economic backing from the U.S., Russia, Israel and China, but still lost handily.

But the failure of the Trump-Vance endorsement raises "a big question -- if this U.S. administration endorses any candidate in Europe, is it to help or is it more of a curse?" Kreko said.

Trump, with his "very harsh anti-European messaging," Kreko said, "has increasingly become a liability for European leaders."

Ultimately, for all Trump's bombast and despite the foreboding assertions in its National Security Strategy paper, Roos said, the MAGA movement seems to have an incoherent and ad hoc approach to influencing European politics.

"I think they would be happy to build, partnerships. But does the MAGA hardcore grassroots movement have an ambition to build a network in Europe that would seek to weaken the EU? I don't think so," he said. "I think the MAGA movement is at its root cause isolationist."

Now, with Orban out, his bridge with Meloni seemingly burned and other far-right leaders distancing themselves from the war in Iran, Trump is "gently, on his own, destroying the little building he had erected in Europe," Roos said.