In his sole full day at the NATO summit, Trump faces an alliance further shaped to his liking
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'NATO was broke, and I said, 'You're going to have to pay,'' Trump said Tuesday. 'And we did a whole thing, and now they're paying a lot. Then I said, 'You're going to have to lift it to 4% or 5%, and 5% is better.''
Spending 5% of a country's gross domestic product on defense is 'good,' Trump pronounced, adding, 'It gives them much more power.'
The boost in spending follows years of Trump complaints that other countries weren't paying their fair share for membership in an alliance created as a bulwark against threats from the former Soviet Union. Most NATO countries, with the key exception of Spain, are preparing to endorse the 5% pledge, motivated to bolster their own defenses not just by Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine but also, perhaps, to placate Trump.
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As a candidate in 2016, Trump suggested that he as president would not necessarily heed the alliance's mutual defense guarantees outlined in Article 5 of the NATO treaty. In March of this year, he expressed uncertainty that NATO would come to the United States' defense if needed, though the alliance did just that after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
On Tuesday, he told reporters aboard Air Force One on his way to The Hague for the summit that whether he is committed to Article 5 'depends on your definition.'
'There's numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right?' Trump said. 'But I'm committed to being their friends.' He signaled that he would give a more precise definition of what Article 5 means to him once he is at the summit.
Trump also vented to reporters before leaving Washington about the actions by Israel and Iran after his announced ceasefire. He said, in his view, both sides had violated the nascent agreement.
After Trump arrived in the Netherlands, news outlets, including The Associated Press, published stories revealing that a U.S. intelligence report suggested in an early assessment that Iran's nuclear program had been set back only a few months by weekend strikes and was not 'completely and fully obliterated,' as Trump had said.
The White House called the report 'flat-out wrong,' and Trump posted in all-caps on social media early Wednesday that any reporting that the strikes weren't 'completely destroyed' was an attempt to 'demean one of the most successful military strikes in history.'
The White House has not said what other world leaders Trump would meet with one-on-one while in The Hague, but he said he was likely to cross paths with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
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Time Magazine
16 minutes ago
- Time Magazine
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17 minutes ago
Trump's 'obliteration' strike claims undercut urgency of negotiations with Iran: Analysis
While President Trump has repeatedly declared that the United States' military strikes on key Iranian enrichment and research sites "totally obliterated" the country's nuclear facility, the intelligence community and other officials within his administration have quietly insisted that reaching a diplomatic solution was just as critical as ever. On Tuesday, multiple officials told ABC News that an initial intelligence report assessed that the attack on Iranian facilities over the weekend did not completely destroy the country's nuclear program and likely only set it back by months. In the wake of the strikes, European allies have also been attempting to make the case for renewed nuclear diplomacy to Trump administration officials, and a source familiar with the conversations says Secretary of State Marco Rubio has acknowledged that there's still a need for a diplomatic solution. 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On Tuesday, public-facing officials in Washington also notably declined to describe the U.S. approach to Iran as "maximum pressure"-- the often-repeated phrase used by the administration to refer to the sanctions campaign waged against the regime following the president's decision to leave an Obama-era nuclear deal with the country in 2018. Sources say Trump's special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, has been in contact with Iran throughout the conflict with Israel, but so far, U.S. officials have not pushed plans for another face-to-face meeting. "A return to diplomacy must start as soon as possible," said Dana Stroul, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. "There was never going to be military operations, either Israeli operations or US military operations, that could completely eliminate Iran's program," said Stroul, who was the Pentagon's top Middle East official between 2020 and 2023. 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If the sides came together again, talks would again hinge on the president's key demand that Iran vow not to enrich uranium on its own soil, said Stroul, who is now the director of research and a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. "The question is whether the Trump administration is going to double down and demand that Iran give up all domestic enrichment and complete the dismantling of its facilities," she said. "And that presumably would happen under the auspices of the IAEA, which is why the Director General, Rafael Grossi, is asking to get into Tehran as fast as possible." Public statements from Iran have been focused on portraying the regime's strength rather than diplomacy, as the country's officials have signaled it will swiftly restore its damaged nuclear program. "The plan is to prevent interruptions in the process of production and services," Iran's nuclear chief Mohammad Eslami said Tuesday, according to the country's state media. Andrea Strickler, the deputy director of the nonproliferation and biodefense program at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy, says Iran's vow is reason for the Trump administration to double down on diplomacy. "To prohibit Iran from 'building back better' its nuclear threat, Washington should seek a negotiated solution with the regime requiring its full, permanent nuclear dismantlement," she said, emphasizing that a deal "must turn over all remaining secret assets like enriched uranium, centrifuges, and facilities." Grossi's repeated comments that the IAEA is unaware of the uranium's whereabouts have raised concerns among proliferation experts. 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Hegseth said Sunday, "both public and private messages" were being "directly delivered to the Iranians, giving them every opportunity to come to the table." Stroul said the weekend strikes on Iran's nuclear sites "marked a decisive shift" in Washington's approach to Iran's nuclear program, and that "the regime in Tehran has to understand the Americans are willing to put serious skin in the game in an offensive way." "Iran is vulnerable diplomatically," she said, arguing the US no longer has a "containment" posture toward Iran and that the president is in a position to "demand the completion of the dismantling of the infrastructure of Iran's nuclear program, and to insist that the regime give up any future desire to enrich uranium domestically."
Bloomberg
20 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Portugal Reiterates It Will Meet Defense Spending Goal in 2025
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