Washington– Secretary General of NATO Mark Ruti He is expected to meet with the President Donald Trump on Wednesday to try to calm the president Anger at the military alliance more Iran war.
Trump had suggested that the United States might consider leaving the transatlantic alliance after NATO member states ignored his call to help reopen it. Strait of HormuzA vital waterway for shipping, Iran has effectively closed it and sent gas prices soaring.
The Republican president’s meeting with Rutte, with whom he has a warm relationship, comes as the United States and Iran coincide late Tuesday. Agreement on a two-week ceasefire Including the reopening of the strait. The emerging ceasefire was reached after Trump said he would strike Iranian power plants and bridges, threatening to do so “An entire civilization will die tonight.”
The plan to reopen the strait remains cloudy and is expected to be the main focus of Wednesday afternoon’s meeting with Rutte. The White House said the meeting is expected to be behind closed doors. But in a Trump administration, this could change at the last minute, and meetings could be opened to the press.
In 2023, Congress passed a law preventing any American president from withdrawing from NATO without its approval. Trump is a long-time critic of NATO, and indicated in his first term that he had the authority on his own to leave AllianceIt was established in 1949 to confront the Cold War threat posed by the Soviet Union to European security.
The core of the commitment undertaken by the 32 member states is the Mutual Defense Treaty, whereby an attack on one country is an attack on all of them. The only time it was activated was in 2001, to support the United States following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
However, Trump complained During its war of choice with Iran, NATO demonstrated that it would not be there for the United States
Ahead of the meeting, Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., issued a statement Tuesday night in support of the alliance, noting that “in the wake of the September 11 attacks, NATO allies sent their young soldiers to fight and die alongside U.S. forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.” McConnell, a member of a committee overseeing defense spending, urged Trump to be “clear and consistent” and said it was not in America’s interest “to spend more time nurturing grudges with allies who share our interests than deterring adversaries who threaten us.”
If Rutte’s meeting does not alleviate Trump’s frustrations, it is unclear whether the Trump administration will challenge the law preventing the president from withdrawing from NATO. When the law passed, Trump’s current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who at the time was a senator from Florida, defended it.
The alliance had already been shaken over the past year with Trump’s return to power and the reduction of US military support for Ukraine in the war against Russia. It threatened to seize Greenland from its ally, Denmark.
But Trump’s dissatisfaction with NATO intensified after the war on Iran began at the end of February, with the president insisting that securing the Strait of Hormuz is not America’s mission, but rather the responsibility of countries that depend on the flow of oil through it.
“Go to the Strait and take it over,” Trump said last week.
Trump was also angry that NATO allies Spain and France banned or restricted the use of their shared airspace or military facilities to the United States in the Iran war. But they agreed with other countries to help form an international coalition to open the Strait of Hormuz when the conflict ends.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, a particular source of Trump’s frustration, is scheduled to travel Wednesday to the Gulf to support the ceasefire. The UK is developing a post-conflict security plan for the Strait, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes.
Trump has previously threatened to withdraw from NATO, and has often said he would abandon allies who do not spend enough on their military budgets. Former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said in his recent memoirs that he feared that Trump would withdraw from the alliance in 2018, during his first term as president.
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Associated Press writer Lorne Cook in Brussels contributed to this report.