The president told reporters he is strongly considering a full withdrawal from NATO after European allies refused to join the Iran campaign, open their bases, or help clear the Strait of Hormuz. His own Secretary of State says Washington may need to re-examine the relationship entirely.
Donald Trump has taken his long-running war of words with NATO to an entirely new level — telling reporters at the White House that he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of the 75-year-old military alliance altogether. The threat landed during a tense sit-down with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, where the president called the organisation a "paper tiger" and accused its European members of abandoning the United States when it mattered most. He said he was "never swayed by NATO" and described the alliance's refusal to back the Iran campaign as "a great test" that Europe had failed spectacularly.
The fracture between Washington and its traditional allies has been widening since the US and Israel launched their joint air offensive against Iran on February 28. European nations refused to allow American forces to use bases on their soil for strikes on Iranian targets, declined to contribute warships to secure the Strait of Hormuz — where more than 600 commercial vessels remain stranded — and continued to block Trump's attempts to acquire Greenland from Denmark. Secretary of State Marco Rubio poured fuel on the fire by telling a television interviewer that the administration may need to "re-examine" the entire US–NATO relationship once the Iran conflict is resolved. The comments sent shockwaves through European defence ministries, with several holding emergency consultations about the potential collapse of the transatlantic security framework that has underpinned Western defence since 1949.
There is a legal guardrail — a 2023 law, ironically co-sponsored by Rubio himself when he was still a senator, bars any president from withdrawing from NATO without explicit Congressional approval. But constitutional scholars warn that the current Supreme Court could side with the executive branch if Trump decides to test it. European leaders are not waiting around to find out. France has renewed its push for an independent European defence force, and Germany is accelerating its military spending programme. The crisis has opened a genuine question about whether the Western alliance can survive a president who treats it as optional — and it arrives at a moment when the United States is already stretched dangerously thin between the Iran war, the Hormuz shipping catastrophe, and mounting tensions in the Indo-Pacific.