Spain's right faces dilemma as Sánchez gains ground on Iran conflict stance

The sirens started on a Saturday in early March, when the United States and Israel turned their military attention toward Iran. The response came swiftly, in the same language of violence. By Sunday, Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had already staked out his position: the military actions, he said, violated international law. He would not support them.

This stance put Spain's opposition in an impossible corner. The Popular Party and Vox, the two main right-wing forces in parliament, found themselves disagreeing with Sánchez at precisely the moment when public opinion was moving in his direction. According to polling data, nearly seven in ten Spanish citizens opposed the military campaign. Even more striking: four in ten actively supported what Sánchez was doing. The opposition had expected to ride a wave of regional election victories into pressure for early general elections. Instead, they were watching their political ground shift beneath them.

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party leader, moved first. He argued that Spain should stand with liberal democracies, suggesting it was odd that Hamas, the Houthis, and Iran's government seemed pleased with the Spanish government's response. But this framing struggled to gain traction. When Sánchez refused to allow the United States to use Spanish military bases at Rota and Morón without explicit permission, and when he held firm even as Trump threatened to cut all relations with Spain and impose an embargo, something shifted in the Spanish political conversation. Suddenly, the prime minister looked like he was defending his country against a foreign power. The opposition, by contrast, appeared to be siding with Washington over Madrid.

The irony was sharp enough to cut. Those who called themselves patriots seemed closer to a U.S. president threatening Spain than to their own government. Social media filled with comparisons to Andrés Iniesta's famous goal, with people across the ideological spectrum—anarchists, communists, monarchists, socialists—praising Sánchez's defiance. Even internationally, the picture complicated the right's position. Italy's Giorgia Meloni, ideologically aligned with Feijóo, adopted nearly identical language to Spain's government, emphasizing bilateral agreements and refusing to be drawn into the conflict. France's Emmanuel Macron said much the same thing.

For Vox, the situation was even more precarious. The far-right party had positioned itself as part of Trump's global movement, alongside figures like Javier Milei in Argentina and other reactionary leaders. Trump himself had repeatedly said Santiago Abascal would be Spain's next president. Now, at the moment of Vox's greatest political strength, its ideological allies had started a war in the Middle East. The party found itself trapped between its international allegiances and the fact that Spanish voters did not want this war.

The ghost of Iraq haunted the conversation, though few said its name directly. In 2003, Prime Minister José María Aznar had supported George W. Bush's invasion, sending 1,300 Spanish troops as part of what became known as the Plus Ultra Brigade. The justification was weapons of mass destruction that were never found. The cost was steep: on March 11, 2004, Madrid's trains were bombed. One hundred ninety-two people died at Atocha station. More than two thousand were wounded. Spain had learned, in blood, what it meant to follow Washington into Middle Eastern war.

Now, two decades later, another American administration was launching another conflict in the Middle East, again citing weapons of mass destruction, again asking NATO allies for support. And again, Spain's government was saying no. The opposition had not yet publicly committed to supporting the United States and Israel. Feijóo had adopted Trump's framing about Iran pursuing nuclear weapons, but he had not crossed the line into explicit endorsement of military action. Neither had Abascal. But their silence, in a moment when the public and much of Europe stood with Sánchez, was itself a kind of answer. The right faced a choice between its international ideological partners and its own voters. For now, it was choosing neither, and losing ground to both.