Berk Kutay Gokmen<\/p>\n
14 May 2026\u2022Update: 14 May 2026<\/p>\n
By Berk Kutay Gokmen<\/p>\n
ISTANBUL (AA) – US Secretary of State Marco Rubio raised questions regarding NATO amid the war with Iran, criticizing Spain for denying US aircraft access to its bases during the war.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the reasons why I supported NATO was because it gave us basing rights. It allowed us to have bases in Europe that we could use in a contingency like something in the Middle East,\u201d Rubio said in an interview with Fox News, aired Wednesday but taped earlier this week.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo when you have NATO partners denying you the use of those bases \u2013 when the primary reason why NATO is good for America is now being denied to us by Spain, as an example \u2013 then what\u2019s the purpose of the Alliance? It starts becoming a \u2018they\u2019re allies when they want to be\u2019 kind of thing,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Spain has denied US military aircraft access to its air bases during the Iran conflict, prompting threats from Washington of a trade embargo, troop withdrawals and even suspension from NATO.<\/p>\n
Clarifying that there are countries in NATO that are \u201cvery helpful\u201d to the US, he said that \u201cothers like Spain have been atrocious, just horrifying.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat is the purpose of being in an alliance whose benefit to us is these basing rights if, in a time of conflict like the one we\u2019ve had with Iran, they can deny us the use of those bases? So why are we there for? Only to protect them but not to further our national interest? This is a very legitimate question that we need to address,\u201d Rubio said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Berk Kutay Gokmen 14 May 2026\u2022Update: 14 May 2026 By Berk Kutay Gokmen ISTANBUL (AA) – US Secretary…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113348,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,21312],"class_list":{"0":"post-113347","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-iran","8":"tag-iran","9":"tag-sitekeywords"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116572465687388411","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113347","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113347"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113347\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113347"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113347"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113347"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}