The war against Iran suddenly got a European address. Iran has officially accused NATO of complicity in what it describes as an illegal American-Israeli operation against its territory - and the trigger for the accusation is a statement by the alliance's own Secretary General, Mark Rutte.

In an interview on American television, Rutte revealed that 500 American aircraft took off from US bases in Italy in support of the operation named „Epic Fury", launched on February 28. According to him, the operation involved between 4,000 and 5,000 combat sorties from European bases, and alongside Italy, he named Romania as a participant too - Bucharest, he said, even cut commercial flights to make room for aerial refueling of the aircraft.

Iranian spokesman Esmail Baghaei immediately seized on the admission. „NATO's Secretary General explicitly identified Italy and Romania as participants in the aggression against Iran", he wrote, calling it an „admission of active complicity in an illegal war of aggression". Baghaei demanded that the two European countries explain to their own citizens and to the world why they're involved.

Italy quickly disowned the heavy words, claiming it had allowed only „technical and logistical flights", not operations of hundreds of combat aircraft. A classic diplomatic maneuver - being inside, while also not being quite all the way inside.

For the Balkans, this isn't abstract news. When an alliance that includes our own neighbors openly admits it's putting its bases at the disposal of a war against a third country, the question becomes concrete: where does „logistical support" end, and where does participation in war begin? And who asks the citizens of those countries whether they agree to their territory being a launch pad for someone else's conflict?