Trump has expressed growing contempt for North Atlantic allies as they refused to be drawn into his war on Iran – key US politics stories from Wednesday 1 April at a glance
Donald Trump has said he is “absolutely” considering withdrawing the US from Nato, warning that the matter was “beyond reconsideration” after the refusal of US allies to join the US-Israeli war against Iran.
Trump has long been vocally sceptical about the benefit of Nato membership to the US, but since North Atlantic allies have refused to take part in the month-long, faltering US-Israeli assault on Iran, the president has stepped up his rhetoric.
It could be politically and constitutionally difficult for Trump to formally withdraw from the 1949 Washington treaty, Nato’s founding document, but Ivo Daalder, the US permanent representative at Nato headquarters from 2009 to 2013, said the serious damage to the alliance had already been done.
“This is by far the worst crisis Nato has ever confronted. Military alliances are, at their core, based on trust: the confidence that if I am attacked, you will come help defend,” Daalder wrote in an online commentary. “It’s hard to see how any European country will now be able and willing to trust the United States to come to its defence.”
