{"id":7123,"date":"2026-07-08T09:16:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:16:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/7123\/"},"modified":"2026-07-08T09:16:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-08T09:16:08","slug":"nato-secretary-general-defends-allied-contributions-in-us-war-against-iran","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/7123\/","title":{"rendered":"NATO Secretary General defends allied contributions in US war against Iran"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ANKARA, Turkey \u2014 Following US President Donald Trump\u2019s criticism of European countries for failing to provide the expected backing in the war against Iran, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte defended allies\u2019 crucial contributions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe know it was a disappointment for the Americans when it comes to Iran; it has to do with isolated cases. At the same time, we\u2019ve seen up to 5,000 sorties [of US aircraft] from European bases [as part of its military operations against Iran]. Allies are implementing all the bilateral basing arrangements,\u201d Rutte said during his doorstep remarks on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Late Tuesday, Trump identified European nations that he viewed as unsupportive during the US war on Iran in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=R5MD3dIwa8o\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">press conference <\/a>with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.\u00a0Countries including Italy and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/world\/2026\/mar\/16\/starmer-distances-uk-from-iran-war-as-eu-leaders-rule-out-sending-warships\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the UK<\/a> have previously refused to get drawn into the conflict directly. <\/p>\n<p>\u201cItaly turned us down, Germany turned us down, and France turned us down\u2026 Why are we spending hundreds of billions of dollars when they\u2019re not there for us? We\u2019ve always been there for them,\u201d Trump said shortly after landing in Ankara.<\/p>\n<p>The US military conducted a new round of strikes on Tehran, striking more than 80 targets, according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.centcom.mil\/MEDIA\/PUBLIC-RELEASES\/Article\/4535772\/us-forces-complete-new-round-of-retaliatory-strikes-against-iran\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">statement <\/a>published late on Tuesday by the US Central Command.\u00a0Rutte described those actions as \u201cabsolutely necessary.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Further doubling down on Europe\u2019s credibility, he said the continent is a major platform for US \u201cpower projection\u201d and has matched Washington\u2019s defense spending.<\/p>\n<p>During meetings today at the summit, he expects allies to \u201creaffirm that Iran must never acquire nuclear weapons,\u201d \u2013 a position that strongly aligns with the Trump administration.<\/p>\n<p>On other matters, the Secretary General, speaking from the Turkish capital ahead of talks today between all 32 NATO member-states, named Russia as the core long-term threat to the alliance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ANKARA, Turkey \u2014 Following US President Donald Trump\u2019s criticism of European countries for failing to provide the expected&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7124,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[47,8,32,643,156,182,1129,292],"class_list":["post-7123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-europe","tag-france","tag-germany","tag-global","tag-iran","tag-italy","tag-nato-summit-2026","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7123\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}