The President of the European Council, Charles Michel, called for calm in Iraq on Friday 3 January, hours after the death of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in an American raid on Baghdad.
Mr Soleimani was the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, responsible for Iran’s external operations.
“The cycle of violence, provocations and retaliations which we have witnessed In Iraq over the past few weeks has to stop. A further escalation must be avoided at all cost”, he warned in a statement.
Recalling that Iraq remained “a very fragile country”, Mr Michel felt that “too many weapons and too many militias” were slowing down the process of a return to normal daily life for Iraqis.
The President of the European Council also warned of a “generalised flare up of violence” throughout the region and “the rise of obscure forces of terrorism that thrive at times of religious and nationalist tensions”.
Although, at the time of going to press, and despite our request, the European External Action Service had not reacted to the situation, several Member States, on the other hand, expressed their views on the death of General Soleimani on 3 January. The Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and the United Kingdom met with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo earlier in the day.
The British Dominic Raab called for “all parties to be appeased”, believing that another conflict “was in no way in our interest”. In a statement, he recalled that the United Kingdom had “always recognised the aggressive threat posed by the Iranian Quds force led by Qasem Soleimani”.
According to the German government spokesman, “by killing the general, the United States reacted to a series of provocations by Iran”. He added that Germany wanted a diplomatic solution to the crisis.
The French President, Emmanuel Macron, called for restraint and to avoid a “new dangerous escalation”. Earlier in the day, the French Secretary of State for European Affairs, Amélie de Montchalin, had expressed concern. “We’re waking up to a more dangerous world. A military escalation is always dangerous”, she said on RTL radio. For her, it is “the continuation of an escalation that has been going on for months. What was feared is happening: a heightened power dynamic between the United States and Iran”.
NATO Spokesman Dylan White said the Alliance was closely monitoring the situation in the region and remained in close and regular contact with the US authorities. For his part, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, via his spokesman, called for maximum restraint, stressing that the world could not afford another war in the Gulf. (Original version in French by Camille-Cerise Gessant)