CBS News asked its reporters and editors to gauge the local mood in foreign capital cities as the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, now nearing the two-week mark, leaves energy and stock markets in turmoil.
President Trump has said he intends to end the war soon, on his own timetable. But Iran says it's prepared for a "long-term war of attrition" to destroy the global economy.
Below is a snapshot of international opinions and viewpoints on the conflict.
A makeshift memorial was erected outside the Iranian embassy in Moscow last week. Residents of the Russian capital brought flowers, candles, and stuffed animals to express their solidarity with the Iranian people as Iranian officials said over 1,000 civilians had been killed by the U.S.-Israeli strikes.
"It's so sad, so many children died, it's simply inhumane. How can this be?" Natalia, a Moscovite who brought flowers, told state broadcaster MIR24. "Such a beautiful country, such mosques, how can they destroy it all?"
The overwhelming majority of Russians disapprove of the American-Israeli operation against Iran, at least according to Russia's pro-Kremlin Channel 1.
Russian President Vladimir Putin expressed his condolences last week to his Iranian counterpart, President Masoud Pezeshkian, over the killing of former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, whose son Mojtaba has since become the new supreme leader. The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly condemned the U.S.-Israeli campaign, calling it a "pre-planned and unprovoked act of armed aggression against a sovereign and independent UN member state."
Outside the Iranian embassy, Tatiana Pluzhnikova, a Moscovite who said she had lived and worked in Iran for years, described it to local media as "the friendliest, most peace-loving country. To all Iranians — be strong," she added.
"No normal person could support such vile acts, such inhuman attacks."
In the first days of the war, headlines in Germany were dominated by reports of as many as 30,000 German nationals being stranded in the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf countries as airlines canceled thousands of flights.
"Around half past midnight we suddenly heard sirens," tourist Richard Grüttmöller told Der Spiegel last week, speaking from his hotel balcony. "We told the kids it was just thunder."
"It's very surreal," René Lembke, who waited 12 hours in Dubai airport for a flight that never took off, told the magazine: "We're here in a holiday paradise. … Something could happen at any moment … that's the uncertainty you feel."
At home, Germans have seemed increasingly concerned about the wider implications of the war. A "DeutschlandTrend" survey by public broadcaster ARD last week found that over half of respondents believed the war was unjustified, while three quarters voiced fear the conflict would spread to other countries.
Nearly nine in 10 Germans said international politics was increasingly shaped by the "law of the strongest."
Poles have been palpably uneasy since the war began. On a busy city street, passers-by stopped briefly for interviews last week with Polish news website WP.
"I'm afraid," said one elderly woman. "Wars are easy to start but hard to end."
"I think the war should have been prevented," said a woman in her early 20s. "I understand the goal of a regime change in Iran, but now so many countries are affected by this war — even Cyprus."
Broader European polling has also shown rising unease about U.S. policy: Around one in five respondents in Europe's six largest countries — including Poland — said they now viewed the United States as a "major threat" to their security.
For some Poles, those concerns have been exacerbated by the Iran war, as they fear it could impact the conflict raging on their doorstep for four years already — the one they remain most worried about, Russia's war on Ukraine.
On Ukrainian social media feeds, an AI-generated photo of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy holding an ace of spades with a drone at the center of the playing card has received thousands of likes over the last couple weeks.
Following a request from the U.S. Defense Department, Ukraine sent drone interceptors and pilots to Jordan over the weekend to help defend U.S. military bases from Iranian drones. The plea for help from Washington led many Ukrainians to recall the Oval Office show-down a year earlier, when President Trump told Zelenskyy he had "no cards" to play, and Vice President JD Vance asked if the Ukrainian president would ever "say thank you" to the U.S.
"It seems like we have the cards now," one soldier based in Kyiv told CBS News, adding that he was now waiting for Vance to thank Ukraine.
But satisfaction over the tacit recognition of Ukraine's air defense expertise has been tempered by dwindling Western interceptor stockpiles in the Middle East — supplies that many in Ukraine had hoped might eventually make their way to Kyiv.
Ukrainians hate the Iranian regime for supplying Russia with drones that have killed Ukrainians for four years. They would love to see the governments of both Iran and Russia fall, but some are concerned that the U.S. is focusing on the war in the Middle East at the expense of pressuring Russia and helping Ukraine.
"A free democratic Iran is a dream for Ukraine," Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleg Dunda told CBS News. "If Iran joins the international order, oil prices would drop, undermining Russia's budget and leading to fewer drones and missiles being sent into Ukraine."
"I do see a lot of risks for Ukraine in the current situation with Iran," he added. "If American resources are expended in the Persian Gulf, there will be less to defend NATO's eastern flank. And as long as oil prices continue to rise, Russia will use that money on rockets and drones for Ukraine."
The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran have prompted serious questions here about the "special relationship" between the U.K. and U.S.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer had been seen as achieving a degree of success in fostering a positive relationship with President Trump as the U.S. leader had more contentious exchanges with other European leaders.
But when the U.K. declined U.S. requests to use its bases for offensive strikes against Iran, Mr. Trump lashed out at Starmer, triggering debate among lawmakers here about whether the prime minister had made the right decision for Britain's national interests.
"This is not Winston Churchill that we're dealing with," Mr. Trump said, mocking Starmer.
Some of Starmer's critics — predominantly on the right wing of British politics — argue that maintaining a positive relationship with the U.S. should be the priority, but Starmer has stuck by his position that the U.K. prefers a negotiated settlement to the nuclear issue in Iran, and he has continued to urge a deescalation of the war.
Strarmer appears to have the backing of most British voters, with a majority of Britons telling the pollster YouGov that they do not support the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran and calling the justification for the strikes "unclear."
The U.K. is allowing the U.S. to use its bases for what it deems to be defensive operations and is belatedly sending a warship to Cypriot waters to protect a British air force base, "But after all the effort invested into building up this relationship," the BBC's political editor Chris Mason wrote last week, "it has never been in a rockier place than it is now."
In the Republic of Ireland, another American military intervention in the Middle East has proven deeply unpopular, reviving a decades-long debate over the U.S. military's use of Ireland's Shannon airport as a refueling base.
"Most people in Ireland view the war as reckless and illegal," Fintan O'Toole, one of Ireland's most prominent political commentators, told CBS News this week. "It is hard to find anyone who believes that Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S. or who understands exactly what the envisaged endgame is."
"Israel's war on Gaza has been deeply unpopular in Ireland and these attacks on Iran and Lebanon seem like an extension of it. Also, of course ordinary people have been badly affected by the immediate rise in fuel prices and don't see anything good happening as a consequence," he said.
The Irish government has been a vocal critic of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza and Dublin backed South Africa's legal proceedings against Israel at the International Court of Justice, accusing Israel of committing genocide in the Palestinian territory.
Ireland's President Catherine Connolly said Sunday that Ireland could not ignore the "catastrophic consequences of violating the U.N. charter," with respect to the U.S.-Israeli attack on Iran, adding that "the violations of international law we are witnessing are shocking and numbing."
Some left-wing opposition politicians have recently called on the Irish government to ban the U.S. military from using Shannon airport, which has been a convenient transatlantic refuelling stop since it opened in 1945.
Inside the Iranian Embassy in New Delhi stands a long table draped in black cloth. On it lies an open book, overlooked by a portrait on the wall of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
