Breaking the silence

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Mark Nayler

Friday, 13 March 2026, 11:56

In the wake of Donald Trump's threats to Spain for condemning his attack on Iran, we've seen two very different approaches to diplomacy emerge within the EU. Germany's chancellor Friedrich Merz, who was sitting next to Trump in the Oval Office during his embarrassing tirade against Madrid, has avoided public confrontation with the US president. For sitting in silence during that meeting, Merz has been strongly criticised by the Spanish government, certain members of which favour a more explosive style of diplomacy.

Labour minister Yolanda Díaz's attack on Merz and the EU this week made Pedro Sánchez's 'No to war' speech look half-hearted. In a colourful interview with Politico in Brussels, Díaz indirectly described the German leader as a "vassal who [pays] homage to Trump", typical of a "servile" European leadership that has "no idea how to manage the historic moment we're living in". For not taking on Trump directly in the Oval Office, Merz was also criticised by Spain's foreign minister, José Luis Albares, and Antonio García Ferreras, presenter of current affairs TV show Al Rojo Vivo, who branded him a "coward".

Harsh, no? Díaz is right to call on the EU to not mindlessly endorse everything Trump does. But the best way to oppose American foreign policy is through considered diplomacy, not unscripted verbal battles. Merz's critics have slammed him for not rising to the occasion in that bizarre meeting, but the opposite was true: he rightly refused to lower himself to the infantile level of Trumpian diplomacy. Off-camera and post-meeting, he apparently informed his host that economic sanctions cannot be imposed on individual EU members. It was the equivalent of keeping the unruly class idiot behind for a telling-off, rather than doing it in front of everyone.

After attacking Merz and the EU, Díaz praised her government for defending "human rights, dignity and decency around the world". Similarly, Sánchez's condemnation of Iran's Khamenei regime, which has committed countless human rights violations since taking power in 1989, was cursory compared to his diatribe against America and Israel. No wonder the Spanish government has won a friend in Iranian president Masoud Pezeshkian - apparently for showing that "ethics and awakened consciences still exist in the West". The appalling irony of being saluted by a regime that stands against all of the EU's founding political values - democracy, freedom, equality, rule of law - seems to have been lost on both Díaz and Sánchez.

One wonders how often Díaz will speak out against the abuses of dignity and decency that are likely to continue under Mojtaba Khamenei, who became Iran's Supreme Leader after his father's assassination. The Khamenei regime would be a target deserving of her outrage; Merz, whose understated approach to diplomacy has been misinterpreted as subserviency, is not.