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05-03-2026
MADRID: Spain says the United States is not using and will not be using joint military bases on its territory for operations against Iran, a mission condemned by Madrid.
“Based on all the information I have, the bases are not being used for this military operation,” Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares told Spanish public television on Monday.
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has condemned US and Israeli strikes on Iran that began on Saturday as an “unjustified” and “dangerous military intervention” outside the realm of international law, in another break from US policy.
“The Spanish government will not authorize the use of the bases for anything beyond the agreement or inconsistent with the United Nations,” Albares said, referring to the Rota naval base and the Moron airbase.
The US operates at the bases under a joint-use arrangement, but they remain under Spanish sovereignty.
Defence Minister Margarita Robles said the bases “will not provide support, except if, in a given case, it were necessary from a humanitarian perspective”.
Spain also condemned the retaliatory attacks by Iran on Gulf countries.
According to maps by flight-tracking website FlightRadar24 on Monday, 15 US aircraft have left bases in southern Spain since the US and Israel launched attacks on Iran. At least seven of the aircraft were shown on FlightRadar24 as having landed at Ramstein airbase in Germany.
The Spanish position is an outlier among the major European countries.
Britain had also initially refused to allow the use of its bases for an attack on Iran, but on Sunday, Prime Minister Keir Starmer authorized their use for “collective self-defence”, amid Iranian counterattacks targeting US assets across the Middle East and energy infrastructure in the Gulf region.
France and Germany, meanwhile, are prepared to do the same.
The three countries’ leaders were “appalled by the indiscriminate and disproportionate missile attacks launched by Iran against countries in the region, including those who were not involved in initial US and Israeli military operations”, read a joint statement on Sunday.
“We have agreed to work together with the US and allies in the region on this matter,” they stated.
Early on Monday, a suspected Iranian drone crashed into the runway at the United Kingdom’s RAF Akrotiri base in southern Cyprus. British and Cypriot officials said the damage was limited. There were no casualties.
Hours later, two drones headed for the base were “dealt with in a timely manner”, according to the Cypriot government.
The incidents came as Prime Minister Keir Starmer signalled on Sunday that the UK was prepared to support the United States in its confrontation with Iran raising the prospect that it could be drawn deeper into a war it did not choose by its closest ally.
In a joint statement with the leaders of France and Germany, Starmer said the European group was ready to take “proportionate defensive action” to destroy threats “at their source”.
Later, in a televised address, he confirmed that Westminster approved a US request to use British bases for the “defensive purpose” of destroying Iranian missiles “at source in their storage depots, or the launches which are used to fire the missiles” but his agreement did little to placate US President Donald Trump, who said the decision came too late.
UK-based military analyst Sean Bell cautioned against reading too much into the Akrotiri incident.
Media was not able to independently verify the claim. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
