ITALY PERSPECTIVE

Italy has just crossed the Rubicon. According to Al Jazeera and the Straits Times, Rome has refused to authorize the use of the Sigonella base in Sicily for the transit of American bombers to the Middle East. The Straits Times specifies that the decision concerns specifically the landing of bombers en route to Iran — not surveillance operations or logistical support. The nuance is Italian through and through: one doesn't slam the door, one closes a window. Al Jazeera notes that this decision comes after Italy co-signed a joint statement with Germany, France and the United Kingdom calling on Israel to abandon the death penalty law. Meloni, who had maintained strategic ambiguity about the war in Iran, has apparently decided that the Sigonella base — from which American drones departed for Libya in 2011 — would not be the symbol of Italian participation in an illegal war. The Washington Post reports that Trump has "slammed allies" after the Italian refusal. ANSA, the official Italian agency, is strangely laconic — one line on the subject in a continuous stream of information, as if Rome preferred to act without making a spectacle of it. Sigonella, a NATO base in Sicily, is the largest air-naval base in the Mediterranean. It is from there that the United States operated during the intervention in Libya in 2011 — with Italy's active support. Meloni's refusal is all the more significant as it breaks with a tradition of Italian-American military cooperation in the Mediterranean. The Italian press, via ANSA, treats the information with a revealing laconicism: no great debate, no dramatic headlines. Italy prefers to act in silence — a refusal without spectacle, typically Italian.