Trump is expected to meet NATO leader Rutte as he muses about pulling out of the military alliance
WASHINGTON– NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte is expected to meet with President Donald Trump on Wednesday to try to assuage the president’s anger at the military alliance over the Iran war.
Trump had suggested the United States might consider leaving the transatlantic alliance after NATO member nations ignored his call for help reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway, when Iran effectively closed it and sent gas prices skyrocketing.
The Republican president’s meeting with Rutte, with whom he had warm relations, comes as the United States and Iran agreed late Tuesday to a two-week ceasefire that includes reopening the strait. The nascent ceasefire was agreed after Trump said he would strike Iranian power plants and bridges, threatening to “die an entire civilization tonight.”
The plan to reopen the strait is still unclear and is expected to be the focus of Wednesday afternoon’s meeting with Rutte. The White House said the meeting should be held behind closed doors. But in the Trump administration, that can change at the last minute and meetings can be open to the press.
Congress passed a law in 2023 that prevents any US president from withdrawing from NATO without its approval. Trump has long been a critic of NATO and, during his first term, suggested he had the authority to leave the alliance, founded in 1949 to counter the Cold War threat the Soviet Union posed to European security.
The core of the commitment made by its 32 member countries is a mutual defense agreement in which an attack on one is considered an attack on all. The only time it was activated was in 2001, in support of the United States following the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington.
Despite this, Trump complained during his war of choice against Iran that NATO had shown it would not be there for the United States.
Before the meeting, Sen. Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, issued a statement in support of the alliance Tuesday evening, noting that “following the September 11 attacks, NATO allies sent their young service members to fight and die alongside Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq.” McConnell, who sits on the committee overseeing defense spending, urged Trump to be “clear and consistent” and said it was not in America’s interest to “spend more time harboring grudges with allies who share our interests than deterring adversaries who threaten us.”
If Rutte’s meeting does not assuage Trump’s frustrations, it is unclear whether the Trump administration will challenge the law barring a president from withdrawing from NATO. When the law was passed, it was championed by Trump’s current secretary of state, Marco Rubio, who was a senator from Florida at the time.
The alliance has already been shaken over the past year as Trump returned to power, reduced U.S. military support for Ukraine in the war against Russia and threatened to seize Greenland from its ally Denmark.
But Trump’s pressure on NATO intensified after the start of the war in Iran in late February, with the president insisting that securing the Strait of Hormuz was not America’s task but the responsibility of countries that depend on the flow of oil through it.
“Go to the strait and take it,” Trump said last week.
Trump was also angered that NATO allies Spain and France banned or restricted the use of their airspace or joint military installations on behalf of the United States in the Iran war. They and other countries, however, agreed to contribute to an international coalition aimed at opening the Strait of Hormuz at the end of the conflict.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is particularly the source of Trump’s frustration, was due to travel to the Gulf on Wednesday to support the ceasefire. The UK is working to develop a post-conflict security plan for the strait, a narrow waterway between Iran and Oman through which around a fifth of the world’s oil passes.
