EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has stated plainly that the Iran conflict is not Europe's war, and Tehran has sent the bill regardless. The question now is not who pays, which is settled, but whether the Caspian was a single night's work or the shape of what the money buys next.
Ukraine's Security Service struck sanctioned cargo ships on July 25 with the deep strike capability European taxpayers have financed, a day after Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukrainian drones would reach 4,000km next year and a month into the 40-day campaign of deep strikes he announced on June 25. Washington had warned Kyiv days earlier against attacking non-Russian vessels, advice that lasted less than a week.
Relief in the markets ran exactly as long as the pause in the bombing. Brent fell about 5 per cent on July 27 to just under €81 a barrel and Dutch gas dropped below €59 per megawatt hour once Washington and Tehran halted their strikes, though European gas storage at 54.2 per cent against 65 per cent a year ago leaves the continent buying the shortfall at whatever the next escalation charges.
Every new front is also a domestic transaction. The share of Poles who want arms shipments to Ukraine stopped has climbed from 18.3 per cent in December 2022 to 45.2 per cent by July 2026, and that hardening of opinion is filed in Brussels under radicalisation, where European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen promised in June 2024 to "build a bastion against the extremes from the left and the right".
Europe will learn along with everyone else whether the Caspian was an incident or an opening. A proxy is not merely an ally that fights with your money, but one that chooses your enemies with it.
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