EU leaders meet to discuss sanctions, tariffs, and Middle East policy
The heads of the European Union's 27 member nations will meet in Brussels to discuss tougher sanctions on Russia, ways to prevent painful new United States tariffs, and how to make their voices heard in the Middle East conflicts.
Most of the leaders will arrive at the event taking place on Thursday from a brief but intense NATO summit, where they pledged a big boost in defence spending and papered over some of their differences with US President Donald Trump.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy will join the EU summit by videoconference, after having met Trump on Wednesday.
US-led NATO downgraded Ukraine from a top priority to a side player this week, but Russia's war in Ukraine remains of paramount concern for the EU.
Members will be discussing a potential 18th round of sanctions against Russia and whether to maintain a price cap on Russian oil, measures that some nations oppose because it could raise energy prices.
Meanwhile, Trump's threatened tariffs are weighing on the EU, which negotiates trade deals on behalf of all 27 member countries. He lashed out at Spain on Wednesday for not spending more on defence and suggested yet more tariffs. France's president criticised Trump for starting a trade war with longtime allies.
European leaders are also concerned about fallout from the wars in the Middle East, and the EU is pushing to revive diplomatic negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program.
EU members have internal disagreements to overcome. They are divided over what to do about European policy towards Israel because of its conduct in its war on Gaza. And left-leaning parties are attacking European Commissioner Ursula von Der Leyen's pivot away from the EU's climate leadership in favour of military investment.
Defence and security are likely to top the agenda. The summit will end with a statement of conclusions that will set the agenda for the bloc for the next four months, and can be seen as a bellwether for political sentiment in Europe on key regional and global issues.
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Qatar Tribune
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US president announces talks with Iran next week
THE HAGUE: US President Donald Trump has praised what he described as a swift conclusion of the war between Iran and Israel. He noted that the United States is likely to pursue a commitment from Tehran to abandon its nuclear ambitions in upcoming talks with Iranian officials next week. Speaking from The Hague during the NATO summit, Trump expressed confidence that Iran was unlikely to resume any efforts to develop nuclear weapons. He indicated that discussions with Iranian representatives are scheduled for the following week and suggested that a formal agreement could be on the table, though he personally did not view it as essential. Trump conveyed his belief that Iran would opt for a diplomatic route rather than trying to rebuild its nuclear infrastructure, saying the country is focused on recovery rather than escalation. He remarked that Iran has little interest in pursuing nuclear enrichment at this point. He also made clear that if Iran did attempt to revive its nuclear program, the United States would not stand by. While ruling out immediate military action, he said that the US would not permit such a development and expressed hope that some form of constructive relationship with Iran could eventually emerge to resolve the issue.
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
Trump vs US intelligence: Iran is only the latest chapter
United States President Donald Trump has insisted that the military strikes he ordered on Iran's nuclear facilities on Sunday morning 'completely obliterated' Iran's uranium enrichment capabilities. And after an initial classified US intelligence report contradicted that assertion, Trump and his administration have lashed out at those who leaked the document and the media that has covered it – throwing out its assessment. The standoff between Trump and the evaluation of sections of his own intelligence community continued through Wednesday at The Hague, where the US president was attending the NATO summit and was asked several questions about the leaked document. Yet it was only the latest instance of Trump publicly disagreeing with US intelligence conclusions during his past decade in politics – whether on Russia or North Korea, Venezuela or Iran. Here's what the latest spat is about, and Trump's long history of disputing intelligence assessments: What is Trump's latest disagreement with US intelligence about? On June 21, the US joined Israel in its strikes against Iran. US forces hit Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan, three Iranian nuclear sites, with a range of missiles and bunker-buster bombs. Trump applauded the success of the US attacks on Iran multiple times. 'Iran's key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated,' he said in a televised address from the White House after the attack. However, a confidential preliminary report by the intelligence arm of the Pentagon, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), suggested otherwise. The DIA report said the US attacks had only set Iran's nuclear programme back by less than six months. The report added that in the DIA's assessment, Iran had moved its stockpile of enriched uranium before the strikes, something Tehran has also claimed. As a result, little of the material that Iran could in theory enrich to weapons-grade uranium had been destroyed. On Tuesday, the White House rejected the findings of the intelligence report. 'This alleged assessment is flat-out wrong and was classified as 'top secret',' White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement, describing the person who leaked the document as a 'low-level loser in the intelligence community'. 'The leaking of this alleged assessment is a clear attempt to demean President Trump and discredit the brave fighter pilots who conducted a perfectly executed mission to obliterate Iran's nuclear program. Everyone knows what happens when you drop fourteen 30,000-pound bombs perfectly on their targets: total obliteration,' Leavitt added. Trump also dismissed the report on Wednesday during the NATO summit in the Netherlands, continuing to claim that the US decimated Iran's nuclear capabilities and denying claims that Tehran moved its enriched uranium. 'I believe they didn't have a chance to get anything out because we acted fast,' Trump said, adding 'it would have taken two weeks, maybe, but it's very hard to remove that kind of material… and very dangerous. 'Plus, they knew we were coming,' Trump added. 'And if they know we're coming, they're not going to be down there [in the underground sections of the nuclear facilities].' On Wednesday, the White House website published an article titled Iran's Nuclear Facilities Have Been Obliterated – and Suggestions Otherwise are Fake News. Besides Trump, the article also quotes Israel's Atomic Energy Commission, which has said that 'the devastating US strike on Fordow destroyed the site's critical infrastructure and rendered the enrichment facility inoperable.' Of Iran's three major nuclear sites, Fordow is the hardest to reach for Israel's missiles, as it is buried deep under a mountain – which is why Israel successfully convinced the US to hit the facility with bunker-buster bombs. Additionally, the White House article quotes the Trump-appointed US director of national intelligence (DNI), Tulsi Gabbard, as saying: 'The operation was a resounding success. Our missiles were delivered precisely and accurately, obliterating key Iranian capabilities needed to quickly assemble a nuclear weapon.' John Ratcliffe, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), also diverged from the DIA report, saying the US had 'severely damaged' Iran's nuclear facilities. In a statement published on the CIA website on Wednesday, Ratcliffe said: 'CIA can confirm that a body of credible intelligence indicates Iran's Nuclear Program has been severely damaged by the recent, targeted strikes. This includes new intelligence from a historically reliable and accurate source/method that several key Iranian nuclear facilities were destroyed and would have to be rebuilt over the course of years.' Yet Trump's track record of disputing intelligence assessments and distrusting the intelligence community runs much deeper than Iran. Did Trump disagree with US intelligence during his first term? Yes, multiple times, including: The US intelligence community, in July 2016, accused Putin of meddling in the US presidential election with the aim of helping Trump defeat Democratic challenger Hillary Clinton. In November of that year, Trump won the election. His transition team rebuked intelligence reports that concluded that Russian hackers had covertly interfered in the election. In a statement, the Trump transition team said: 'These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.' In an interview in December 2016, Trump himself said: 'I think it's just another excuse. I don't believe it.' He added that: 'Nobody really knows. And hacking is very interesting. Once they hack, if you don't catch them in the act, you're not going to catch them. They have no idea if it's Russia or China or somebody. It could be somebody sitting in a bed someplace. They have no idea.' In July 2018, the US indicted 12 Russian military intelligence officers, accusing them of being involved in 'active cyber operations to interfere in the 2016 presidential elections', according to then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. This indictment was part of a probe into allegations of collusion between the Trump team and Russia before the 2016 election, being led by former FBI Director Robert Mueller. That same month, Trump met his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Helsinki for a joint summit. During a joint news conference after the two leaders had a one-on-one private discussion, Trump backed Putin on the Russian leader's insistence that the Kremlin did not meddle in the 2016 election. 'I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today,' Trump said. 'He just said it's not Russia. I will say this: I don't see any reason why it would be.' Trump also said the Mueller investigation was a 'disaster for our country' and drove a wedge between Washington and Moscow, the 'two largest nuclear powers in the world'. Former CIA Director John Brennan called Trump's statements during the news conference 'nothing short of treasonous'. Trump later pulled Brennan's security clearances. Those clearances give select former officials access to classified information and briefings. In 2019, Trump again rebuked the intelligence community, disagreeing with them over multiple issues. The US intelligence community, on January 29, 2019, told a Senate committee that the nuclear threat from North Korea remained and Iran was not taking steps towards making a nuclear bomb. Intelligence agencies said they did not believe that Iran violating the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a nuclear deal signed between Iran and a group of countries led by the US in 2015. This, even though Trump had pulled out of the deal in 2018. 'The Intelligence people seem to be extremely passive and naive when it comes to the dangers of Iran. They are wrong!' Trump wrote on X, then called Twitter. 'Be careful of Iran. Perhaps Intelligence should go back to school!' Trump wrote in another X post. On the other hand, US intelligence said North Korea was unlikely to give up its nuclear program. On January 30, Trump contradicted this in an X post: 'North Korea relationship is best it has ever been with US No testing, getting remains, hostages returned. Decent chance of Denuclearization.' During his first term, Trump engaged directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, and in June 2019, met him at the fortified Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas – the first US president to travel there. Meanwhile, US spy chiefs warned that the ISIL (ISIS) armed group would continue to launch attacks from Syria and Iraq against regional and Western adversaries, including the US. That assessment was at variance with Trump's views. In December 2018, he withdraw 2,000 US troops from Syria on grounds that ISIL (ISIS) did not pose a threat any more. 'We have won against ISIS,' he said in a video. What did Trump and US intelligence clash over recently? During his second term, too, Trump has differed with the intelligence community's conclusions on multiple occasions, including: Trump's current term has been marked by an aggressive immigration crackdown. In March, he signed a proclamation invoking the 1798 Alien Enemies Act. Trump's proclamation claimed that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is 'perpetrating, attempting, and threatening an invasion or predatory incursion' against US territory. The proclamation says all Venezuelan citizens aged 14 or older 'who are members of' the gang and are not naturalised or lawful permanent US citizens are liable to be restrained and removed as 'Alien Enemies'. In his proclamation, Trump said the Tren de Aragua 'is closely aligned with, and indeed has infiltrated, the [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro regime, including its military and law enforcement apparatus'. However, in April, a classified assessment from the National Intelligence Council (NIC), an arm of the DNI, found there was no coordination between Tren de Aragua and the Venezuelan government. The assessment found that the gang was not supported by Venezuela's government officials, including Maduro. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) was the only one, among the 18 organisations that make up the US intelligence community, to disagree with the assessment. On March 25, Trump's DNI Gabbard unambiguously told US Congress members that Iran was not moving towards building nuclear weapons. 'The IC [intelligence community] continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorised the nuclear weapons programme he suspended in 2003,' Gabbard said. On June 17, however, Trump told reporters he believed Iran was 'very close' to building nuclear weapons, after he made an early exit from the Group of Seven summit in Canada. Why does Trump distrust the intelligence community? Trump's distrust for his own intelligence community is widely viewed as stemming from what he has described as a 'witch-hunt' against him – the allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help him win. During the 2018 news conference in Helsinki, Trump said: 'It was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily.'
Al Jazeera
2 hours ago
- Al Jazeera
NATO's 5 percent spending pledge is a threat to people and the planet
NATO's leaders agreed this week to invest 5 percent of their countries' gross domestic product (GDP) on 'core defence requirements as well as defence and security-related spending by 2035'. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte called it a 'quantum leap' in spending that would guarantee 'freedom and security' for the military alliance's one billion people. It certainly is historic in terms of military escalation, but will it deliver security – and if so, for whom? The headline demand for 5 percent GDP spending has been so loud, it's easy to forget that for a long time, many NATO members considered the previous 2 percent goal either unachievable or unimportant. NATO first committed to its 2 percent GDP goal in 2002, but by 2021, only six of its members had achieved it. Yet three years later, 23 members had met the goal and all 32 are expected to comply by the end of 2025. This week, NATO has committed to more than doubling its spending to 5 percent of GDP. This will be partly met through creative accounting and reflects a desire to trumpet a big number to satisfy a petulant President Trump. The 5 percent headline includes 1.5 percent spent on military-related infrastructure, which could be broadly defined to include civilian expenditure. Even so, it reflects a huge escalation of military expenditure over the next decade from an already very high level. Last year, NATO spent $1.5 trillion on the military – more than half of global military spending. If members comply with the core 3.5 percent target by 2030, that would mean a total of $13.4 trillion in military expenditure. It's an impossible figure to grasp, but if you stacked it in one-dollar bills, you could make almost four piles that reach the moon. It could also be distributed as a one-off cash bonus of $1,674 to every person on the planet. In reality, the money will be diverted – most of all from social and environmental spending – even though 30 percent of Europeans report difficulty in making ends meet and climate scientists warn that we have two years left to keep temperature increases below the international target of 1.5 degrees Celsius (34.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, who fought for a partial exemption from the 5 percent goal, was the most honest about this costly trade-off: 'If we had accepted 5 percent, Spain would have to spend by 2035 an extra 300 billion euros on defence. Where would it come from? From cuts in health and education.' Social and environmental spending is already on the chopping block. In February, the United Kingdom announced it would reduce its aid budget to 0.3 percent of GDP to pay for military spending increases – a year after it won an election committing to increase foreign aid. Belgium, the Netherlands and France followed suit, announcing aid cuts of 25 to 37 percent. The United States, under Trump, has decimated its overseas aid and climate programmes and reduced healthcare funding while proposing a record $1 trillion expenditure on the Pentagon. Europe is falling far behind on its own environmental and social goals, with its primary funding vehicle, the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF), expiring in 2026. The European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) concludes that most European NATO members will be unable to meet the 3.5 percent NATO target without cutting budgets, raising taxes or changing fiscal rules. NATO's spending spree will not only divert money – it will worsen the climate crisis. As one of the world's biggest carbon polluters, it is investing in more gas-guzzling jets, tanks and missiles. Military emissions are notoriously hard to track due to limited data, but one report estimates that 3.5 percent of GDP spending would lead to 2,330 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases by 2030 – roughly the same as the combined annual emissions of Brazil and Japan. NATO's justification is that increased investment is needed to confront the threats of 'Russia' and 'terrorism'. Yet there is no rationale behind the 5 percent target or details on why threats to NATO have so drastically increased. Nor is there self-examination on how NATO's actions partly set the stage for Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Russia has increased military spending, but it still spends 10 times less than NATO. Nor could it catch up militarily with NATO's 32-strong alliance, given its economy: $2 trillion in 2024 (nominal GDP), compared with $26 trillion for non-US NATO countries and $29 trillion for the US alone. As for 'terrorism', the idea that NATO's increased spending could deter it ignores the failures of the 'War on Terror', where NATO interventions in Afghanistan and Libya prompted instability and fighter recruitment. The security NATO seems most concerned with is that of its arms firms. Long before Trump's pressure, arms firms have pushed for higher European military spending through lobbying groups like the AeroSpace and Defence Industries Association of Europe (ASD). They have successfully made military security an overriding European Union objective, winning ever more public money for research and industry support. Now they are reaping the rewards with booming revenues and profits. Before the NATO summit, BlackRock released an investment report celebrating the arms industry as a 'dynamic growth industry' and a 'mega force' that will drive investment trends in the coming years. NATO's idea of security diverts money from social needs, worsens the climate crisis, rewards arms firms profiting from global conflict, and chooses war over diplomacy. Its bellicose stance in The Hague this week makes it one of the greatest threats to global security – even to life on this planet. It is up to the peoples of NATO countries to reject this deadly path and reclaim security based on cooperation, justice and peace. The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
