How Trump obliterated the best-laid plans of world's most powerful military alliance
London: NATO wanted this week's summit to be relatively boring. A controversy-free meeting, a bland communique, and a polished photo op to show unity. What it's getting instead is a flashpoint – one lit by the United States itself.
Just days before 32 NATO leaders descend on the Dutch capital, the world's most powerful military alliance is watching its agenda be torched by a fresh theatre of war: Iran. And not just Israeli warplanes this time, but American ones, too.
In a stunning military escalation, US forces joined Israel in bombing Iran 's most fortified nuclear sites, including the Fordow enrichment facility buried deep under a mountainside. GBU-57 'bunker-busting' bombs – some of the heaviest non-nuclear ordnance in the American arsenal – were used to punch through rock and concrete. Other strikes hit Natanz and Isfahan.
Trump's message was blunt: 'Obliterated.'
And just like that, the fragile choreography of what might have been NATO's most consequential summit in its 76-year history – carefully designed to hide its internal fractures – has been blown off course.
The summit was never supposed to be about Iran. Or even Ukraine, for that matter.
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To keep US President Donald Trump happy – and at the table – NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte stripped the agenda down to its bare bones. Gone was any serious discussion on Russia's war in Ukraine. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been downgraded to dinner guest, rather than council participant. The alliance's evolving strategy on Russia? Hidden in a drawer.
Instead, the headline act was supposed to be a carefully pre-cooked pledge from European allies: more defence spending, more kit, more readiness. Trump demands 5 per cent of GDP. Rutte's trying to sell a compromise – 3.5 per cent for core defence, another 1.5 per cent for 'infrastructure' and cybersecurity.
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