Trump takes his go-it-alone approach to NATO summit after announcing Israel-Iran ceasefire
When President Donald Trump travels here Tuesday for a consequential summit of NATO leaders, he'll arrive toting a freshly brokered ceasefire he hopes can prove to his skeptics — including at the conference — that he is a peacemaker at heart.
The arrangement between Israel and Iran came after an intensive afternoon of diplomacy at the White House, but hours after it was set to take effect, Israel accused Iran of firing several missiles and vowed to respond 'with force.' Tehran denied violating the truce.
Trump hopes the ceasefire — if it holds — will act as vindication for the US strikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, which drew a mixed response from leaders here in Europe, who feared becoming embroiled in a wider war.
In the end, the deal Trump announced Monday was brokered with the help of Qatar, and appeared to leave the Europeans on the sidelines. White House officials said the diplomatic arrangement would not have been possible had Trump not ordered the bombing run over the weekend.
'Congratulations to everyone!' Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Monday evening as he revealed the parameters of what he called the end of the '12 Day War.'
At least in Trump's mind, the deal could bolster his stature as a global deal maker at a moment when his ability to strike peace agreements is being tested. As he steps back onto the world stage, the president appears eager to demonstrate his ability to bring warring parties to the table — even if he hasn't yet been able to resolve the European conflict in the background of this week's gathering.
This week's Hague summit had been carefully planned over months to avoid angering Trump and paper over the significant differences that remain between Europe and the United States on how to manage the war in Ukraine.
The centerpiece is a short and focused final statement — designed to avoid any disputes over language — that will formalize a new plan to raise annual military spending targets to the figure Trump had demanded: 5% of GDP. (Trump, however, told reporters on Friday that the US shouldn't have to meet that target.)
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will have a seat at a pre-summit dinner on Tuesday evening, which Trump is expected to attend. But the Ukrainian leader won't participate in the one-day summit on Wednesday, underscoring his stalled ambitions for his country to join NATO — an outcome Trump has ruled out.
Already, divisions between Trump and European leaders over Ukraine had threatened to foil attempts by NATO to signal a unified front to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has appeared reluctant to apply new sanctions on Moscow, even as his peacemaking efforts have stalled, and so far hasn't approved any new military assistance to Ukraine.
And over the weekend, European officials privately fretted Trump would decide to cancel his trip to the NATO summit altogether, afraid he'd deem it a needless exercise that would take him away from Middle East consolations in Washington, according to one western official.
White House officials had also weighed whether to still attend amid the Middle East conflagration. But on Monday, after it appeared both Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, the president determined to go ahead, carrying with him the freshly brokered agreement after an extraordinary day of diplomacy at the White House.
In the past, a US president who just conducted a major military operation, followed by arranging a pause in fighting, might have relished an opportunity to consult his European counterparts in person to attempt coalition building.
But Trump's approach appears less collaborative and more go-it-alone.
Even before he gave the go-ahead to launch strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump openly dismissed European efforts at brokering a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.
'Iran doesn't want to speak to Europe, they want to speak to us,' Trump told reporters Friday, hours before US stealth jets took off on a bombing run in Iran.
'Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.'
A few days beforehand, he departed early from the Group of 7 summit in Canada rather than remaining at the mountainside gathering to strategize on Iran with leaders whose own countries could have become embroiled in the widening conflict.
The president's solitary approach has hardly come as a surprise to European leaders, who found themselves sidelined in the lead-up to the US strikes. Trump made clear over the weekend he believed only the US had any real standing to intervene, and declared afterwards, 'only American weapons could do what has been done.'
Trump views multilateral organizations like the G7 and NATO skeptically, believing instead that direct interactions between countries is a more fruitful approach to world affairs.
He has previously written off NATO as an attempt to wring resources from the United States to protect nations on the other side of an ocean. At a 2018 NATO summit during his first presidency, he left fellow leaders shaken when he said during a closed-door meeting he would considering doing his 'own thing' if they didn't significantly boost their defense spending.
Trump's loud calls for increased investment in defense among NATO members have yielded results. More countries now meet the alliance's threshold than they did when he first entered office in 2017. But he has continued to insist it's not enough, particularly as the war in Ukraine rages.
Now, however, the recent tensions in the Middle East may overshadow the war playing out in Europe.
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Los Angeles Times
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- Los Angeles Times
Dutch authorities investigate possible sabotage against rail network as NATO summit opens
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Dutch authorities were investigating possible sabotage against the rail network on Tuesday after a power outage left the country's main airport with limited train services as a two-day summit of NATO leaders was opening in the Netherlands. Caretaker Justice Minister David van Weel told the NATO Public Forum that investigators were considering the possibility that fire in some 30 rail cables may have been set intentionally. 'It could be an activist group. It could be another state. It could be anything,' Van Weel said at a roundtable gathering. The damage disrupted rail services and no trains were running between Schiphol Airport and the country's capital, Amsterdam. According to service operator ProRail, a power failure occurred early Tuesday morning in cables near the airport. An investigation revealed 'considerable damage' had been done by a fire according to a statement. Trains were running south, in the direction of The Hague, where world leaders are gathering for the start of a two-day NATO summit. Leaders arriving for the summit were not taking trains: They will be whisked in motorcades along closed-down roads from the airport to hotels and the summit venue. ProRail said it expects normal service to be returned by early evening. Temporary barricades and metal mesh fences surrounding the World Forum summit venue are just a fraction of the major military and police operation called Orange Shield set up to ensure the safety of the alliance's 32 leaders. In what they are calling the biggest security operation ever staged in the Netherlands, authorities are locking down parts of the city, closing off roads and shutting down airspace. About 27,000 police officers — about half of the country's entire force — will be on duty around the summit along with more than 10,000 defense personnel. On Monday, pro-Russian hackers launched a series of denial-of-service attacks on several municipalities and organizations linked to the NATO summit. The National Cybersecurity Center said in a statement that many of the attacks were claimed by a pro-Russian hackers' group known as NoName057(16) 'and appear to have a pro-Russian ideological motive,' but did not elaborate. France's high-speed rail network was the target of sabotage last July, attacked by arsonists ahead of the opening ceremony in Paris of the Olympic Games. Targeting remote locations far from the capital, the apparently coordinated attacks sought to cut off rail routes into the capital from all directions. Fires were predominantly set in pipes containing critical signaling cables for the system known as the TGV. Quell writes for the Associated Press. AP writer John Leicester in Paris contributed.
Los Angeles Times
23 minutes ago
- Los Angeles Times
Enraged Trump blasts Israel and Iran over ceasefire violations
BEIRUT — President Trump excoriated both Israel and Iran over what he said were violations of the surprise ceasefire between the two nations and that was set to begin Tuesday morning, underscoring the tenuousness of a deal meant to bring a denouement to the fiercest confrontation in the belligerents' decades-long enmity. 'We have two countries that have been fighting for so hard and so long they don't know what the f—they are doing,' said Trump in an enraged briefing to journalists ahead of his trip to the NATO summit. The details of the ceasefire — which was brokered by Trump and Qatar's leadership hours after a limited volley of Iranian ballistic missiles targeted the United States' Al Udeid Air Base on Monday — remain unclear, but it had spurred cautious optimism across the Middle East. Yet its fragility was emphasized when Israel accused Iran of breaking the agreement mere hours after it was supposed to take effect, with the Israeli military saying it intercepted a pair of ballistic missiles fired from Iran and that it would respond. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement he instructed the Israeli military 'to continue the intensive operation to strike in Tehran and thwart regime targets and terror infrastructure in Tehran.' Iran's General Staff of the Armed Forces Abdolrahim Mousavi denied any launch after the truce's beginning according to Iranian official media. A later IRGC statement said 14 missiles were fired 'in the last minutes' before the ceasefire. A visibly enraged Trump castigated both sides for the violations, saying he was not happy with either country. 'These guys gotta calm down,' he said in a briefing to journalists before flying out to the NATO summit in Europe. 'I don't like the fact that Israel went out this morning at all, and I'm going to see if I can stop it.' Shortly after, he took to Truth Social to tell Israel to 'BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!' Later he wrote from Air Force One that 'all planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly 'Plane Wave' to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect! Thank you for your attention to this matter!' Israeli officials later told reporters that warplanes carried out a small strike against an Iranian radar north of Tehran around the time Trump was talking to reporters. 'Following President Trump's conversation with Prime Minister Netanyahu, Israel refrained from additional attacks,' said a statement from the office of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. The war began June 13, when Israel launched a wide-scale campaign targeting Iran's military leadership and nuclear facilities, in a bid to destroy what it said was the existential threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. Iran has long maintained its nuclear program is for purely peaceful purposes. The Israeli government confirmed its agreement to the ceasefire proposal on Tuesday morning, saying in a statement it had fulfilled its objectives to eliminate 'dual immediate existential threats from itself — both in the nuclear and ballistic missile fields.' 'In Operation Rising Lion, the State of Israel achieved great historical achievements and placed itself on par with the world powers,' the statement said. Iran's Supreme National Security Council, the governmental body in charge of military affairs, took a similarly triumphant tone in its statement agreeing to the ceasefire, saying that Iran's victory 'forced the enemy to regret and accept defeat and unilaterally halt its attack.' It added that Iranian forces will remain 'with their hands on the trigger, ready to deliver a decisive and regrettable response to any act of aggression by the enemy.' Both sides took the opportunity to land powerful blows before the scheduled start of the cessation. Israel pounded the Iranian capital with a massive barrage against multiple neighborhoods that residents said was unprecedented in its ferocity over the 12-day war. That tactic — to launch a major attack at the 11th hour before a ceasefire — has been employed by Israel in past conflicts, but which infuriated Trump, who said he 'didn't like the fact that Israel unloaded right after I made the deal' and blamed Israel for violating it. 'They didn't have to unload... You know, when I say OK now you have 12 hours, you don't go out to the first hour, just drop everything you have on,' he said. Iran gave in kind and dispatched waves of missiles. One hit an apartment block in southern Israel, killing at least four people, according to Israeli health authorities. That too drew Trump's ire. 'I don't like the fact that the retaliation was really strong. But in all fairness, Israel unloaded a lot,' he said. Iran's attacks on Israel have killed 28 people and wounded more than 1,000 others, including the victims of Tuesday's strike. Israel's campaign on Iran has killed 610 people and wounded 4,746 since the war began, according to Iran's health ministry. That a ceasefire was brokered at all came as a surprise. In the hours before Trump's announcement, Iran lobbed missiles at the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, the largest U.S. military installation in the region with some 10,000 U.S. troops and its Central Command headquarters But although it initially triggered fears of a rapid expansion of the conflict, Iran's attack proved to be relatively subdued, less the 'mighty and powerful response' it vowed before the barrage than a pre-choreographed, face-saving gesture designed to be largely symbolic. Trump said Monday that Iran had actually warned the U.S. of the attack in advance. Qatar said the attack was a 'flagrant violation' of its sovereignty and airspace, and promised it would respond in an appropriate manner. Instead, in a measure of the urgency felt by Persian Gulf nations to prevent a wider conflagration, the Qatari emir, Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani coordinated with Trump and Vice President JD Vance to end the hostilities, according to an official briefed on the talks and who requested anonymity to be able to speak freely. Around 6 p.m. Eastern, Trump posted on his social media platform there would be a ceasefire and 'an Official END to the 12 DAY WAR.' 'This is a War that could have gone on for years, and destroyed the entire Middle East, but it didn't, and never will! God bless Israel, God bless Iran, God bless the Middle East, God bless the United States of America, and GOD BLESS THE WORLD!' In Tehran on Tuesday, there was a mood of tentative joy at the end of what had been a bruising few weeks for the capital. Still, many expressed the feeling of being betrayed by the international community. 'Iran was left with very few options,' said Venus Shahri, a 40-year-old teacher from Tehran. Others said that although they were disappointed by the defensive capabilities of Iran's army, they wanted to double down on the fight. 'We shouldn't have accepted the ceasefire offer at all,' said Jaber Khadiri, 55. 'We must have nuclear weapons. There's no other choice.'
Fox News
23 minutes ago
- Fox News
Timeline: Trump's Israel-Iran ceasefire nearly collapses hours after announcement
Hours after President Donald Trump brokered a ceasefire between Israel and Iran, the fragile agreement nearly collapsed as hostilities flared before the truce took effect. Despite the president's announcement, Israel continued its military campaign — launching attacks before the ceasefire's scheduled start 12 hours later. Iran retaliated with a deadly rocket barrage on a hospital in Be'er Sheva, killing at least four people. Israel began preparing a full-scale response before the president stepped in. Trump, visibly frustrated as he departed for the NATO Summit in the Netherlands, blamed both sides — but especially Israel. "Israel. Do not drop those bombs. If you do it is a major violation. Bring your pilots home, now!" Trump wrote on Truth Social. Speaking to reporters while boarding Marine One, the president added, "[Iran] violated it, but Israel violated it too. Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out, and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I've never seen before. The biggest load that we've seen. I'm not happy with Israel." He continued, "When I say, okay, now you have 12 hours — you don't go out in the first hour and just drop everything you have on them." Trump posted the ceasefire terms on Truth Social. "It has been fully agreed by and between Israel and Iran that there will be a complete and total ceasefire (in approximately 6 hours from now, when Israel and Iran have wound down and completed their in-progress, final missions!), for 12 hours, at which point the War will be considered ended… During each ceasefire, the other side will remain peaceful and respectful." According to Trump, Iran would begin the ceasefire at hour 12. Israel would follow at hour 24. A global salute to the "12 Day War" ending would follow. The Israeli Prime Minister's office confirmed that Israel launched a major assault hours ahead of the ceasefire starting, hitting central Tehran. "We attacked forcefully in the heart of Tehran, hitting regime targets and killing hundreds of Basij and Iranian security forces," the statement read. Iranian media confirmed nine casualties in the northern Gilan province. Fars News Agency said, "Four residential buildings were completely destroyed and several neighboring houses were damaged in the blasts." In response, Iran launched missiles at Be'er Sheva just minutes before the ceasefire took effect. Four people were killed, and several others were injured in the strike on a hospital. Trump once again took to Truth Social. "The ceasefire is now in effect. Please do not violate it!" Despite the ceasefire, Iran fired three additional missiles in the hours following. The projectiles were either intercepted or landed in open areas without causing casualties. Israel destroyed a radar installation near Tehran and was preparing a broader offensive before Trump publicly expressed his anger. "I'm really unhappy about Israel going out this morning… because of the one rocket that didn't land — perhaps by mistake. You know what we have? We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don't know what the f--- they're doing. Do you understand that?" the president told reporters. After a direct call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Trump persuaded the Israeli leadership to halt further military actions. The Israeli Defense Forces ordered fighter jets to stand down and return to base.
