Hungarian Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó said he speaks to his counterparts in Russia, Serbia, Israel, the United States and Turkey both before and after EU meetings on foreign affairs. “I speak not only with the Russian foreign minister, but also with the U.S., the Turkish, the Israeli, the Serbian ones, and our other partners before and after the meetings of the Council of the European Union,” Szijjártó said at a campaign rally Monday evening. “The situation is that many decisions are being made in the European Union that influence the relations and cooperation of Hungary with other countries outside the EU,” he said, adding: “That’s what foreign policy is about. Perhaps I’m saying something rough, but diplomacy is about us talking to leaders of other countries.” A report at the weekend in the Washington Post claimed Budapest maintained close contacts with the Kremlin throughout the war in Ukraine and that Szijjártó used breaks during EU meetings to update his Russian counterpart.  Szijjártó on Sunday accused Donald Tusk of “spreading lies and fake news” when the Polish prime minister wrote on X that the revelations about calls with Russia were not a surprise. “We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time,” Tusk said. Hungary’s Europe Minister János Bóka also denied the report, telling POLITICO: “It is fake news that is now being spread as a desperate reaction to [Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s] Fidesz gaining momentum in the election campaign.” The reports are “greatly concerning” as trust between member countries and the bloc’s institutions is fundamental to the EU’s functioning, Commission foreign affairs spokesperson Anitta Hipper said Monday. The Commission is waiting for “clarifications” from the Hungarian government, she added.

HOW TWO WARS ARE PULLING EUROPE AND THE US APART The EU is worried President Trump could abandon Ukraine if the bloc doesn’t support him in the Middle East. By NICHOLAS VINOCUR in Brussels Illustration by Natália Delgado/ POLITICO  The biggest fear of European leaders is that Donald Trump’s war in Iran will lead him to abandon Ukraine. Governments are terrified that the U.S. president could retaliate against America’s European allies for spurning his appeals for assistance in the Middle East, primarily by cutting off what’s left of U.S. help for Kyiv, according to four EU diplomats with knowledge of their discussions. As they scramble to avoid a permanent break in the transatlantic relationship, leaders hope their offer of limited support for his action against Tehran will suffice to convince Trump to stay the course in the conflict with Russia. The war in Iran “must not divert our attention from the support we give Ukraine,” French President Emmanuel Macron said at the end of last week’s EU summit in Brussels. It’s easy to see why EU leaders are so anxious. In recent days Trump has repeatedly blasted them for failing to do more to help him unblock the Strait of Hormuz, the shipping route used by about 20 percent of the world’s oil that has effectively been closed by Iran. He has also explicitly linked continued U.S. involvement in NATO to the Middle East conflict. “NATO IS A PAPER TIGER!” he railed in a Truth Social Post over the weekend. “They complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz … COWARDS,” he concluded. “[W]e will remember.” At the same time, further deepening fears about the transatlantic alliance, Moscow offered Washington a quid pro quo under which the Kremlin would stop sharing intelligence with Iran if Washington ceased supplying Ukraine with intel about Russia, POLITICO revealed on Friday. While the U.S. declined the offer, according to two people familiar with the U.S.-Russia negotiations, the fact it was proffered in the first place points to a possible tradeoff between U.S. involvement in Ukraine and the Middle East. “There’s a crack right now emerging between, you know, Europe and the U.S., which, again, as an avid pro-American and transatlanticist, I lament,” Finnish President Alexander Stubb said in an interview with the Daily Telegraph. “But it’s a reality that I have to live with. And I obviously try to salvage what I can.” MISSILES LIKE CANDIES Governments are concerned that the war in Iran is using up missiles and air defense munitions that Kyiv needs to protect itself against Russia, the four EU diplomats, who were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive diplomatic exchanges, told POLITICO. “When you see what Trump did on Greenland, how he cut off intelligence-sharing with Ukraine on a whim, there’s always a risk [that Trump could remove U.S. support for Ukraine],” one of the diplomats said. “The concern is obviously that the Middle East is taking attention away from Ukraine,” added a second diplomat from a mid-sized EU country. “The Emiratis are shooting out Patriot [air defense missiles] like candies, whereas Ukraine desperately needs them. It can’t become an either-or situation” in which the U.S. only has enough bandwidth for one conflict and abandons Ukraine, the diplomat added. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been explicit about the risk of such a tradeoff, telling the BBC on Thursday that he had a “very bad feeling” about the impact of the Middle East war on Ukraine. He lamented the fact that as the war goes on, U.S.-led peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russia are being “constantly postponed” in what the Kremlin calls a “situational pause.” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy is pictured at Moncloa Palace in Madrid, Spain on March 18, 2026. | Alberto Gardin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images Ukrainian negotiators traveled over the weekend to the U.S. for talks with Trump’s envoys, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The latter praised the talks as “constructive” in a post on X, but gave no hint of when negotiations with Russia would resume. DAMAGE CONTROL European leaders, including France’s Emmanuel Macron, Britain’s Keir Starmer and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, are ramping up efforts to show they support the U.S. president’s goal of freeing up the Strait of Hormuz. In a now familiar role, Rutte has been outspoken in praising Trump’s efforts. The former Dutch prime minister last week called the destruction of Iran’s military capacity by the U.S. and Israel “very important,” linking it to “European security” at a time when some EU leaders, like Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, have criticized the war as “illegal.” Macron has been more circumspect in public, but active behind the scenes. In two separate calls with Trump before last Thursday’s gathering of EU leaders, the French president assured his U.S. counterpart that France would help clear the Strait when conditions allow, according to comments from Trump himself and a third EU diplomat who was briefed on the calls. “This is about managing the man,” the diplomat said. In the early hours of Friday, Macron — who has otherwise pledged to send a naval detachment to the Strait of Hormuz after the hot phase of the war dies down — said France was pursuing the aim of freeing it up via the United Nations. In response to a question from POLITICO at the European Council on Thursday, the French leader said Paris intends to “sound out its main partners” about tabling a resolution in the Security Council on securing freedom of navigation in the vital waterway. Trump is no fan of the United Nations, but he could see an advantage to a U.N. Security Council resolution that forms the basis for a broader coalition to free up the Strait, a fourth EU diplomat said. The southern suburbs of Beirut after an Israeli airstrike on March 10, 2026. | Fadel Itani/AFP via Getty Images The U.K.’s Starmer is also doing more to help Trump in the Middle East. Following reports that Iran had fired a ballistic missile at the Diego Garcia U.S.-U.K. base in the Indian Ocean, Starmer gave the U.S. a green light to use British bases to launch strikes on Iranian sites targeting the Strait of Hormuz. Previously he had only granted permission for the bases to be used for defensive strikes. Starmer was also the main organizer of a statement signed by seven EU and allied countries (the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Canada and Japan) in which they expressed their “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait.” Asked about the intent of this statement, which doesn’t promise any immediate material help, the third diplomat said: “It’s part of the same effort. We need to show Trump we are active in the Middle East. It’s in our interests, but also in Ukraine’s.” Such pledges remain vague for now. Macron and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz have both asserted they have no intention of being drawn into the war in Iran. But as far as Trump is concerned, “appearances matter — sometimes more than substance,” said the same diplomat.

BRUSSELS — The EU is limiting the flow of confidential material to Hungary and leaders are meeting in smaller groups — as Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk warned of long-standing suspicions Viktor Orbán’s government is sharing information with Russia. But there will not be any formal EU response to a fresh set of allegations because of the possible impact on the Hungarian election on April 12, according to five European diplomats and officials who told POLITICO they were concerned about the risk of Budapest leaking sensitive information to the Kremlin. “The news that Orbán’s people inform Moscow about EU Council meetings in every detail shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone,” Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, who has backed Hungarian opposition leader Péter Magyar in the election, wrote on X on Sunday. “We’ve had our suspicions about that for a long time. That’s one reason why I take the floor only when strictly necessary and say just as much as necessary.” In a report on Saturday the Washington Post said that Orbán’s government maintained close contacts with Moscow throughout the war in Ukraine, and Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó used breaks during meetings with other member countries to update his Russian counterpart, Sergey Lavrov. Worries about Hungary sending information directly to Moscow were behind the rise of breakout formats with like-minded leaders, instead of holding meetings with all 27 EU members, said one of the European government officials, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak freely about sensitive matters. “Overall the less-than-loyal member states are the main reason why most of relevant European diplomacy is now happening in different smaller formats — E3, E4, E7, E8, Weimar, NB8, JEF, etc,” the official said.  The numerals refer to the number of European leaders in the group. The Weimar alliance comprises France, Germany and Poland. NB8 is the eight countries in the Nordics and Baltics. JEF is the Joint Expeditionary Force of 10 northern European nations. ‘FAKE NEWS’ Former Lithuanian Foreign Minister Gabrielius Landsbergis, who frequently attended Council meetings where Szijjártó was present, told POLITICO he was warned as early as 2024 that the Hungarian side could be passing on information to Russia, and that he and his counterparts had limited the information they shared when he was present. Even ahead of a critical NATO summit in Vilnius in 2023, envoys moved to cut Budapest’s delegation out of sensitive talks, Landsbergis said. “We would only speak in formal terms, later breaking out to speak without Hungary about the achievables of the summit,” he said.  The Bucharest Group of Nine, a club of countries on the military alliance’s Eastern Flank, reportedly contemplated kicking Budapest out of the format the following year over failures to agree on support for Ukraine. Hungary’s Europe Minister János Bóka told POLITICO the reports over the weekend were “fake news” designed as “a desperate reaction to [Orban’s party] Fidesz gaining momentum in the election campaign. But the Hungarian people won’t be deceived.” János Bóka, Hungary’s EU affairs minister, is pictured at a General Affairs Council in Brussels, Belgium on Jan. 28, 2025. | Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images For his part, Szijjártó rejected the content of the Washington Post article and accused the media of putting forward “conspiracy theories that are more preposterous than anything seen before.” More information could be held back in light of the fresh allegations, one of the diplomats said.  “There is an argument to be made for classification of info and documents on the EU side,” the diplomat said. While using the classified designation “isn’t a silver bullet,” it could “serve as a deterrent against leaks and the passing of sensitive info to third parties. It would also make investigations more automatic.” NO SURPRISES The five diplomats said they were unsurprised by the news, but that any formal response would depend on whether Orbán is re-elected in April. Despite lagging behind Magyar’s Tisza in the polls, the Hungarian prime minister told POLITICO on Friday he could “certainly” secure another term. “It undermines trust, cooperation, and the integrity of the European Union,” said a second diplomat of the allegations. “It’s a deplorable situation. If he stays after [the] election, I think the EU need to find ways to deal with this in another manner.” Another cautioned that whatever the EU and its leaders do, Orbán will use it in his favor in the campaign. “I don’t think anybody is eager to do anything that would add oil to fire before April 12,” they said. Despite widespread agreement on the threat posed by Russia, a fourth diplomat pointed out that the content of discussions among leaders and foreign ministers are routinely reported in the press and frequently take place in an unrestricted format, meaning leaders don’t leave their phones outside to minimize the risk of surveillance. But the optics of an EU government working so closely with a hostile state remains politically explosive. “The fact that the Hungarian foreign minister, a close friend of [Russian Foreign Minister] Sergey Lavrov, has been reporting to the Russians practically minute by minute from every EU meeting is outright treason,” Magyar said at a campaign rally over the weekend. “This man has not only betrayed his own country, but Europe as well.” The allegations come as Orbán’s foreign supporters set course for Budapest to help him campaign in the final stretch of the elections. Polish President Karol Nawrocki — a political rival of Tusk’s — will attend events on Monday, while U.S. Vice President JD Vance will jet in ahead of the vote next month.  Orbán refused to sign off on €90 billion in much-needed loans for Ukraine at Friday’s European Council, sparking a furious reaction from fellow leaders. “It wouldn’t be surprising if this proves true,” said a fifth EU diplomat of the allegations. “Hungary has long been [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s ally within the EU and continues to sabotage European security. The blocked €90 billion is simply the latest example of that pattern.”

BERLIN — German Defense Minister Boris Pistorus will spend next week touring the Indo-Pacific with a passel of corporate chiefs in tow to make deals across the region. It’s part of an effort to mark a greater impact in an area where Berlin’s presence has been minor, but whose importance is growing as Germany looks to build up access to natural resources, technology and allies in a fracturing world. “If you look at the Indo-Pacific, Germany is essentially starting from scratch,” said Bastian Ernst, a defense lawmaker from Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s Christian Democrats. “We don’t have an established role yet, we’re only just beginning to figure out what that should be.” Pistorius leaves Friday on an eight-day tour to Japan, Singapore and Australia where he’ll be aiming to build relations with other like-minded middle powers — mirroring countries from France to Canada as they scramble to figure out new relationships in a world destabilized by Russia, China and a United States led by Donald Trump. “Germany recognizes this principle of interconnected theaters,” said Elli-Katharina Pohlkamp, visiting fellow of the Asia Programme at the European Council on Foreign Relations. Berlin, she said, “increasingly sees Europe’s focus on Russia and Asia’s focus on China and North Korea as security issues that are linked.” The military and defense emphasis of next week’s trip marks a departure from Berlin’s 2020 Indo-Pacific guidelines, which laid a much heavier focus on trade and diplomacy. Pistorius’ outreach will be especially important as Germany rapidly ramps up military spending at home. Berlin is on track to boost its defense budget to around €150 billion a year by the end of the decade and is preparing tens of billions in new procurement contracts. But not everything Germany needs can be sourced in Europe. Australia is one of the few alternatives to China in critical minerals essential to the defense industry. It’s a leading supplier of lithium and one of the only significant producers of separated rare earth materials outside China. Australia also looms over a key German defense contract. Berlin is considering whether to stick with a naval laser weapon being developed by homegrown firms Rheinmetall and MBDA, or team up with Australia’s EOS instead. That has become a more sensitive political question in Berlin. WELT, owned by POLITICO’s parent company Axel Springer, reported that lawmakers had stopped the planned contract for the German option, reflecting wider concern over whether Berlin should back a domestic system or move faster with a foreign one. That means what Pistorius sees in Australia could end up shaping a decision back in Germany. TALKING TO TOKYO Japan offers something different — not raw materials but military integration, logistics and technology.  Pohlkamp said the military side of the relationship with Japan is now “very much about interoperability and compatibility, built through joint exercises, mutual visits, closer staff work, expanded information exchange and mutual learning.” She described Japan as “a kind of yardstick for Germany,” a country that lives with “an enormous threat perception” not only militarily but also economically, because it is surrounded by pressure from China, North Korea and Russia.  The Japan-Germany Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement took effect in July 2024, giving the two militaries a framework for reciprocal supplies and services and making future port calls for naval vessels, exercises and recurring cooperation easier to sustain.  Pohlkamp said what matters most to Tokyo are not headline-grabbing deployments but “plannable, recurring contributions, which are more valuable than big, one-off shows of force.” But that ambition only goes so far if Germany’s presence remains sporadic. Bundeswehr recruits march on the market square to take their ceremonial oath in Altenburg on March 19, 2026. | Bodo Schackow/picture alliance via Getty Images Berlin has sent military assets to the region for training exercises in recent years — a frigate in 2021, combat aircraft in 2022, army participation in 2023, and a larger naval mission in 2024. But as pressure grows on Germany to beef up its military to hold off Russia, along with its growing presence in Lithuania and its effort to keep supplying Ukraine with weapons, the attention given to Asia is shrinking. The government told parliament last year it sent no frigate in 2025, plans none in 2026 and has not yet decided on 2027. Germany’s current military engagement in the Indo-Pacific consists of a single P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, sent to India in February as part of the Indo-Pacific Deployment 2026 exercises.  Germany, according to Ernst, is still “relatively blank” in the region. What it can contribute militarily remains narrow: “A bit of maritime patrol, a frigate, mine clearance.” Pohlkamp said Germany’s role in Asia is still being built “in small doses” and is largely symbolic. But what matters is whether Berlin can turn occasional visits and deployments into something steadier and more predictable. The defense ministry insists that is the point of Pistorius’s trip. Ministry spokesperson Mitko Müller said Wednesday that Europe and the Indo-Pacific are “inseparably linked,” citing the rules-based order, sea lanes, international law and the role of the two regions in global supply and value chains.  The new P-8A Poseidon reconnaissance aircraft stands in front of a technical hangar at Nordholz airbase on Nov. 20, 2025. | Christian Butt/picture alliance via Getty Images The trip is meant to focus on the regional security situation, expanding strategic dialogue, current and possible military cooperation, joint exercises including future Indo-Pacific deployments, and industrial cooperation. That explains why industry is traveling with Pistorius.  Müller said executives from Airbus, TKMS, MBDA, Quantum Systems, Diehl and Rohde & Schwarz are coming along, suggesting Berlin sees the trip as a chance to widen defense ties on the ground. But any larger German role in Asia would have to careful calibrated to avoid angering China — a key trading partner that is very wary of European powers expanding their regional presence. “That leaves Germany trying to do two things at once,” Pohlkamp said. “First, show up often enough to matter, but not so forcefully that it gets dragged into a confrontation it is neither politically nor militarily prepared to sustain.”

President Donald Trump has often frustrated European allies with his overt entreaties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and harsh words for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. But behind the seeming imbalance is a longer-term strategic goal – countering China. The Trump administration believes that incentivizing Russia to end the war in Ukraine, welcoming it back economically and showering it with U.S. investments, could eventually shift the global order away from China. It’s a gamble – and one Ukrainians are concerned with – but it underscores the administration’s belief that the biggest geopolitical threat facing the United States and the West is China, not Putin’s Russia. While countering China isn’t the only reason the administration wants a truce, it does help explain why after more than 15 months of fruitless talks and multiple threats to walk away, the president’s team – special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner – keep looking for a breakthrough. A Trump administration official, granted anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, said finding a “way to align closer with Russia” could create “a different power balance with China that could be very, very beneficial.” The administration’s desire to use Ukraine peace negotiations to counter China has not been previously reported. But many observers believe this plan has little hope of succeeding – at least while Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping remain in charge. And the idea of giving Russia economic incentives to grow closer to the U.S. is concerning for Ukraine, said a Ukrainian official, granted anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters. “We had such attempts in the past already and it led to nothing,” they said. “Germany had [Ostpolitik, Germany’s policy toward the East], for that and now Russia is fighting the deadliest war in Europe.” And when it comes to banking on breaking apart China and Russia, the Ukrainian official noted that both countries “have one [thing] in common which you can not beat – they hate the U.S. as a symbol of democracy.” Still, the strategy is in keeping with the administration’s broader foreign policy initiatives aimed at least in part in countering Chinese influence. Taking out Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and pressuring Cuba’s government to the brink of collapse all diminishes China’s influence in the Western Hemisphere. The administration threatened Panama, which withdrew from Chinese leader Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative a month after Trump took office and called Peru’s deal with China surrounding its deepwater port in Chancay a “cautionary tale.” And striking Iran shifted China’s oil import potential, as Tehran supplied Beijing with more than 13 percent of its oil in 2025, according to Reuters. Indeed, the Trump administration official noted that between Venezuela, Iran and Russia, China was buying oil at below-market rates, subsidizing its consumption “to the tune of over $100 billion a year for the last several years.” “So that’s been a massive subsidy for China by being able to buy oil from these places on the black market, sometimes $30 a barrel lower than what the spot market is,” the person said. Even as there are reports that Russia is sharing intelligence with Iran, the U.S. and Russia keep talking. Witkoff and Kushner met with Kirill Dmitriev, a top adviser to Putin, last week. The Russians called the meeting “productive.” Witkoff said they’d keep talking. These negotiations and the broader efforts to counter China now take place under the spectre of Trump asking several countries, including China, for help securing the Strait of Hormuz. The National Security Strategy, released in November, spilled a fair amount of ink on China, though it often doesn’t mention Beijing directly. Many U.S. lawmakers — from both parties — consider China the gravest long-term threat to America’s global power. “There is a longstanding kind of U.S. strategic train of thought that says that having Russia and China working together is very much not in our interests, and finding ways to divide them, or at least tactically collaborate with the partner who’s less of a long term strategic threat to us,” said said Alexander Gray, Trump’s National Security Council chief of staff in his first term. Gray, who is currently the CEO of American Global Strategies, a consulting firm, compared the effort to former Secretary of State and national security adviser Henry Kissinger, who spearheaded President Richard Nixon’s trip to China during the Cold War in an effort to pull that country away from the Soviet Union. The State Department declined to comment for this report. However, a State Department spokesperson previously told POLITICO that China’s economic ties with Latin American countries present a “national security threat” for the U.S. that the administration is actively trying to mitigate. The White House declined to comment. Fred Fleitz, another Trump NSC chief of staff in his first term, noted that the president has “pressed Putin to end the war to normalize Russia’s relationship with the U.S. and Europe,” and wants Russia to rejoin the G8. “It is clear that Trump wants to find a way to end the war in Ukraine and to coexist peacefully with Russia,” said Fleitz, who now serves as the vice chair for American Security at the America First Policy Institute. “But I also believe he correctly sees the growing Russia-China alliance as a far greater threat to U.S. and global security than the Ukraine War and therefore wants to find ways to improve U.S.-Russia relations to weaken or break that alliance.” Others, however, remain skeptical. Craig Singleton, senior director of the China program at Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said the goal to break Russia and China is “appealing in theory, but in practice the partnership between Moscow and Beijing is iron-clad.” “Obviously there is nothing wrong with testing diplomacy and President Trump is a dealmaker. But history probably suggests that this won’t really result in much,” Singleton added. “The likely outcome [with Russia] is limited tactical cooperation with the U.S., not some sort of durable break with Beijing.” And China seeks to keep Russia as an ally and junior partner in its relationship as a counter to Western powers. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi reaffirmed the relationship in a press conference this month, saying, “in a fluid and turbulent world, China-Russia relationship has stood rock-solid against all odds.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio, shortly after his confirmation, hinted at the broader strategy, saying in an interview, that “a situation where the Russians are permanently a junior partner to China, having to do whatever China says they need to do because of their dependence on them” is not a “good outcome” for Russia, the U.S. or Europe. But Rubio, like the Trump administration official given anonymity to discuss ongoing negotiations, both acknowledged that fully severing those ties would be a tough lift. “I don’t know if we’ll ever be successful at peeling them completely off a relationship with the Chinese,” Rubio said in February of last year. Adam Savit, director for China policy at the America First Policy Institute, argued that “Russia matters at the margins, but it won’t be a decisive variable in the U.S.-China competition,” and that the “center of gravity is East Asia.” “Russia gives China strategic depth, a friendly border, energy supply, and a second front in Ukraine to sap Western attention,” he said. “Getting closer to Russia could complicate China’s strategic position, but Moscow is a declining power and solidly the junior partner in that relationship.”

The EU has failed to hold the U.S. accountable for breaches of international law, its former diplomacy chief has warned, accusing European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen of a power grab and calling for the trade pact she negotiated with Washington to be rejected. In comments to POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook, Josep Borrell — who served as von der Leyen’s vice president and high representative for foreign affairs from 2019-2024 — said the U.S. war against Iran “is illegal under international law [and] not justified by an imminent threat as some claimed.” According to Borrell, von der Leyen has “continued to overstep her functions” by conducting foreign policy, which he insists the EU’s foundational treaty “clearly states” is not within her competence. “She is systematically biased in favor of the U.S. and Israel,” he went on, despite Europe “suffering from the consequences in terms of energy prices, while [U.S. President Donald] Trump gloats that this is good for the U.S. because they are oil exporters.” Trump has given several different rationales for the start of the war with Iran, including removing the country’s repressive regime and preventing it from gaining offensive nuclear capabilities. Borrell, a Spanish socialist who since leaving office has served as the president of the Barcelona Center for International Affairs, praised the approach of Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, who has been Europe’s fiercest critic of Trump’s strikes on Iran. Borrell argued that his successor as the EU’s chief diplomat, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, should “be clearer on condemning breaches of international law, whether done by Russia, Israel or the U.S.” because “we lose credibility [when] we use selectively international norms.” Representatives for Kallas did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The former top diplomat, who has long been critical of Israel’s actions in Gaza and has increasingly turned fire on the Commission since finishing his mandate, said the EU should not move ahead with the ratification of the trade agreement von der Leyen and Trump struck in Scotland last summer. “The deal was unfair from the beginning,” Borrell said. “They imposed 15 percent tariffs on us and we reduce our tariffs on them.” The criticism comes as von der Leyen faces a growing rebellion from Spanish socialists from Sánchez’s party, who form an important part of her own dominant coalition in the European Parliament. Senior lawmakers last week condemned comments from the Commission president in which she declared “Europe can no longer be a custodian for the old-world order, for a world that has gone and will not return.” Representatives for von der Leyen declined to comment. Von der Leyen has measured her criticism of the U.S. and Israel, saying that the Iranian regime deserves to fall but urging diplomatic solutions to the conflict. The European Commission President used her State of the Union speech in September to say she would halt bilateral payments to Israel and sanction “extremist ministers.” Spain will hold parliamentary elections by August next year at the latest, and von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party is hoping to take control of the government — with its national affiliate, the Partido Popular, polling consistently ahead of Sánchez’s socialists. Borrell also weighed into the EU’s dilemma over how to unblock €90 billion in much-needed funds for Ukraine after Hungary and Slovakia vetoed the plan at the last moment, having called on Kyiv to repair a pipeline carrying Russian oil to their countries via Ukrainian territory. The two governments, he said, “openly breached the principle of sincere cooperation which is part of the Treaties” by reneging on their agreement. “The is an issue for the Court. The other 25 could provide a bridge loan until the EU loan is approved,” Borrell said, dismissing the charm offensive employed by the bloc’s current leadership. Representatives for von der Leyen declined to comment, while representatives for Kallas did not immediately respond.

STRASBOURG — European and American officials are scrambling to avoid a return to their transatlantic trade war, amid increasing frustration in Washington over the EU’s failure to implement the transatlantic trade deal they agreed last summer. A trio of senior European lawmakers will travel to Washington next week, hoping to meet U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who accuses the EU of implementing “zero percent” of the trade accord reached at President Donald Trump’s Turnberry golf resort in Scotland last July 27. The mission to the U.S. comes amid of flurry of diplomatic contacts between EU and U.S. officials ahead of a high-stakes vote by European lawmakers expected on March 26 that will determine whether Brussels can implement last year’s accord. That vote is at risk of being delayed, yet again, after a series of previous hold ups. U.S. patience is wearing thin, raising the prospect that the tariff conflict could flare up again. “The EU has done approximately zero percent of what they were supposed to do for their trade deal with us. We quickly after the Turnberry deal came into compliance with that deal,” Greer said during a press call on Wednesday.  “The European Union has had their legislation for their tariffs pending for many, many, many, many months,” he added.  Top EU parliamentary negotiators will meet on March 17 to decide whether to push back their vote again. The Turnberry agreement is widely seen in Europe as a one-sided pact. In it, the EU accepted a 15 percent U.S. tariff on most exports, while itself pledging to scrap all tariffs on U.S. industrial goods. Many EU lawmakers fear that Trump could yet renege on the deal to make more tariff threats, as he has done over Greenland and Spain.  In the Parliament, the center-right European People’s Party — the political family of European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and German Chancellor Friedrich Merz — wants to see the deal approved to avoid retaliation by Trump and bring stability to businesses.  The Socialists & Democrats, liberals and Greens have voted against moving forward, however, after balking at the U.S. president’s latest tariff menaces against Spain, his strikes on Iran and his threats to stage a “friendly takeover” of Cuba. CRACKS IN TRUST Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has sought to reassure the Europeans that the U.S. will stick by the deal. Yet skepticism persists. “How can we get clarity with Trump [who] doesn’t respect the deals? I think that, for now, what we would need is some public statement on the willingness to respect the deal,” Brando Benifei, an Italian Socialist who is the Parliament’s point person for relations with the U.S., said on Tuesday.  Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has sought to reassure the Europeans that the U.S. will stick by the deal. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images Benifei will be one of the three MEPs traveling to meet Greer. The others are Bernd Lange, the German Social Democrat who chairs the European Parliament’s trade committee, and Polish center-right lawmaker Michał Szczerba, who sits on the foreign and security committees. They hope to meet Greer on March 20, but the EU lawmakers could already have delayed the vote by then. “I hope that we can find some common ground,” Lange said. Karin Karlsbro, a Swedish liberal who is skeptical on the trade pact, is also expected to meet with representatives of the U.S. mission to the EU, her office said. And Željana Zovko, the top negotiator on the file from the EPP, the biggest grouping in Parliament, will meet with U.S. Ambassador Andrew Puzder on Monday, she told POLITICO. Despite the worries from the U.S. side, Anna Cavazzini, the lead lawmaker on the file in the Greens group who is spearheading opposition to the deal, said she had not been contacted by the Americans. UNRELIABLE PARTNER Despite Bessent’s pledge on the Turnberry pact, the EU remains wary over what Trump will do next. The U.S. has, only this week, launched new investigations into unfair trade practices that could trigger more tariffs against the EU. That has redoubled concerns in Brussels that Trump plans to plow on with his aggressive trade agenda against Europe, undeterred by a Supreme Court ruling last month that substantially overturned his original tariff agenda. On top of the latest investigations, people close to the file say the White House will not shy away from imposing tariffs on national security grounds, such as Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Washington’s double-sided approach is not lost on European lawmakers.  “‘We’ll stick to the deal.’ And less than 24 hours later, they are already threatening us with new tariffs. It is impossible to work with the Trump administration like this,” the Socialist group’s vice president for trade policy, Kathleen Van Brempt, said in a post on X Thursday.  The EPP’s top trade lawmaker, Jörgen Warborn, last week pitched a “sunrise clause,” meaning the deal would only finally kick in if Washington upheld its side of the bargain. “That would give clarity because what the sunrise clause is doing, it’s making sure that the deal doesn’t kick in before it is confirmed that all the elements of the deal are upheld,” Warborn told POLITICO on Tuesday. Željana Zovko, the top negotiator on the file from the EPP, the biggest grouping in Parliament, will meet with U.S. Ambassador Andrew Puzder on Monday, she told POLITICO. | Martin Bertrand/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images Benifei said the sunrise clause could enable his group to support the pact. Still, he explained, this would require provisions allowing the Commission not to implement the EU-U.S. agreement until Washington stops threatening the EU’s digital rules, and until the U.S. lowers tariffs on EU steel derivatives. “We are not there,” he said, expressing skepticism that the EPP would be willing to place such tough demands on the Commission. “They [EPP lawmakers] are a bit worried about the situation that is not moving,” he said. “I need to see what they are actually ready to do, because to be frank, my impression is that they are a bit in the mood [of saying] …‘Just let’s not make Trump angry.’” Carlo Martuscelli contributed to this report.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres will attend a lunch with EU leaders during a gathering in Brussels on Mar. 19, according to two EU diplomats, as some countries call for a stronger defense of international law from the bloc. The lunch with Guterres will likely focus on the situation in the Middle East, where a war between the United States, Israel and Iran — now in its second week — is disrupting trade and global energy markets. Guterres has previously attended March editions of the European Council’s gathering.

FIFA chief Gianni Infantino reported Wednesday morning that he’d met with U.S. President Donald Trump and discussed Iran’s participation in the World Cup. “President Trump reiterated that the Iranian team is, of course, welcome to compete in the tournament in the United States,” Infantino said, following the meeting.  Iran qualified for the 2026 World Cup, to be hosted this summer in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, and is scheduled to play three group-stage games between Los Angeles and Seattle — but its participation has been thrown into doubt in recent weeks.  Trump, along with his Israeli allies, launched a military offensive against Iran late last month. Air strikes killed the Iranian supreme leader, but have failed to topple the regime and triggered regional drone-and-missile retaliation from Tehran. The war has also fueled a spike in oil prices, sparking concern over the global economy.  “We all need an event like the FIFA World Cup to bring people together now more than ever, and I sincerely thank the President of the United States for his support, as it shows once again that Football Unites the World,” Infantino added.  Infantino, who has been head of world football’s governing body since 2016, awarded Trump the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize in December last year.  Unveiling the honor, the governing body said it would “reward individuals who have taken exceptional and extraordinary actions for peace and by doing so have united people across the world.”

Across the country, after the U.S. unleashed strikes in Iran last weekend, veterans anxiously held their breath. They said they’ve seen this story before — and it didn’t turn out well. The military campaign, which plunged the region into chaos, triggered a profound wave of déjà vu for post-9/11 veterans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. And while the nearly dozen veterans who spoke to POLITICO recognize the brutalities of the repressive Iranian regime, they said they have little appetite for another war in the Middle East. Most said they are wary of President Donald Trump’s goals in Iran — on Friday, he demanded “unconditional surrender” from the region — and how many soldiers will be sacrificed in that pursuit. They said they are angry that Congress rebuffed efforts to halt the war. And they’re particularly frustrated by an administration that’s been steadily whittling down veteran support systems. “There is a sense from the government [that] they’re kind of using us as pawns,” said Brandon Waithe, a former Air Force master sergeant who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. “They want to send us to war, but they don’t want to pay for the results of it.” More than anything, the veterans said, they’re worried the U.S. hasn’t learned from its past military mistakes. In 2001, the U.S. launched a widespread military campaign in Iraq and Afghanistan, designed to eliminate terrorist threats after the Sept. 11 attacks — wars that dragged on for decades. Over 7,000 soldiers died, some at the hands of Iranian-funded weapons and insurgent groups. Troops withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021; the Taliban retook control soon after. In its wake, the U.S. left behind years of “civil war, mass death and metastasizing terrorism,” said Phil Klay, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq. The post-9/11 soldiers said they’re still grappling with what they see as the futility of their efforts in those wars. According to Jason Dempsey, a former infantry officer who deployed in both Iraq and Afghanistan, this generation of veterans is more cautious about military force compared with soldiers from the Vietnam War era. “There’s a much greater sense of melancholy and disappointment at this latest iteration of what we’re doing [now],” Dempsey said. Maggie Seymour, who served in the Marines in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait from 2007 to 2016, said her immediate reaction when U.S. fighter jets attacked Iran was: “Are you fucking kidding me?” “People are killed,” added Keegan Evans, who was a Marine Corps helicopter pilot in Iraq. “Sons, daughters, brothers, fathers, the whole list, they don’t come home. And the very legitimate question: What is it for?” “You served in Iraq, you want our country to have learned a certain set of lessons about military force,” Klay said. “A certain kind of caution when it comes to this.” From their perspective, U.S.-backed regime change is rarely successful, and certainly not via airstrike. Diplomacy, they argue, matters more than “chest-pumping” lethality. The aftershocks of combat last far beyond a news cycle. Immediate, tactical wins don’t guarantee success in an enduring war. Military operations must have a long-term plan. “This makes the Iraq War planning look like grand strategy,” said Chris Purdy, an army combat engineer who deployed to Iraq in 2011. The U.S. has “rushed into things like a bunch of five-year-olds playing soccer,” said Evans. “This operation is thinking without acting, which is arguably what we did in any number of wars,” said Seymour. “You could cite any number of examples that didn’t work out.” The veteran community isn’t a monolith — indeed, Trump’s Cabinet contains high-ranking officials who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, including Vice President JD Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. (Trump acknowledged this week that Vance was “maybe less enthusiastic” at the start of the war with Iran.) But for some veterans, the sobering reminder is reflecting on “how poorly conceived and executed those 20 years of war were,” Dempsey said. ”And today, to see the U.S. “doubling down” on the worst of those wars, is “immensely depressing.” “We signed up [in 2001] because we thought we were doing this great, amazing thing,” said Jackie Schneider, a Hoover Institution fellow and Air Force veteran who served in South Korea and Japan. “And the results of that are complicated and unclear. Did we ever accomplish what we set out for?” That’s an answer that veterans don’t have an answer for, Schneider said. And that’s “devastating for this generation,” she added. The Department of Defense did not respond to requests for comment. So far, Trump’s second presidency has been defined by a rapid succession of military actions. He bombed Iranian nuclear facilities last June. In January, he decapitated the Venezuelan government with the swift arrest of President Nicolás Maduro. But when it comes to Iran, Trump’s endgame is unclear. His administration has touted ever-changing arguments for striking Iran: regime change, nuclear capabilities, a hidden ballistic missile program. Meanwhile, on Sunday, Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, dismissed Trump’s demand for surrender, telling “Meet the Press” that Iran “will keep fighting for the sake of our people.” Already, more than 1,000 people have been killed in Iran; seven American soldiers have died in action. Veterans worry the body count will continue to escalate. “Risking your life,” Dempsey said, “getting grievously injured or killed; a friend or family member gets grievously injured or killed; for a [reason] that the president can’t even articulate? “People will [ask],” he continued, “Is my life to be used for one man’s whim?” In the past few days, Cynthia Kao, a former U.S. Air Force reservist who served in Afghanistan, has fielded dozens of phone calls within her veterans network. The anxiety is palpable, she said. A few reservists told her they fear they will be treated as “cannon fodder.” “I am not afraid to die for my country,” is something Kao has heard from her peers. “What I am afraid to do, is die for somebody who’s got their own agenda.”