'Go take your oil:' Nato fissure erupts over Iran as allies brush off US
The US-Israeli war on Iran is driving a fissure between Washington and its Nato allies, as US requests for overflight permission, basing, and air defence systems are brushed off, while the Trump administration casts doubt on its commitment to Nato’s mutual defence clause.
Spain has closed its airspace to US warplanes involved in attacks on Iran. Italy denied US military aircraft en route to the Middle East permission to land at a base in Sicily, Italy’s Corriere della Sera newspaper reported.
Meanwhile, Poland publicly denied on Tuesday that it would relocate its Patriot air defence systems to the Middle East, after a report said the Trump administration had made an informal request to do so.
Leftist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez opposed the US-Israeli war on Iran in its opening days, but the broadening out of refusals shows the US’s isolation is growing.
Italy is governed by right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. Poland has a centre-right government. Warsaw has been one of the US’s staunchest allies since the end of the Cold War, and US President Donald Trump often polls well in the central European country where right-wing populism is a political force.
US President Donald Trump called out Europe’s larger countries on Tuesday in a post on X. He revealed that France, which has often pursued its own agenda in the Middle East, denied US planes flying military equipment to Israel permission to use its airspace. He also criticised the UK for failing to join the war.
“The USA will remember !!!” Trump wrote on X.
His administration has piled onto the combative approach.
Nato Article 5 in doubt?
“A lot has been laid bare,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on Tuesday, when asked about the tensions within the alliance. He refused to commit to Article 5, which says an attack on one Nato member is an attack on all, instead deferring to Trump.
He added that the US had attacked Iran “on behalf of the free world” and “allies” whose missiles Iran threatened.
“When we ask for additional assistance or simple access, basing and overflight, we get questions or roadblocks or hesitations,” he said.
But Hegseth’s remarks bear little resemblance to how the US’s allies see the war, Ian Lesser, the vice president of the German Marshall Fund in the US, told Middle East Eye.
“There is a basic concern that Europe is being asked to contribute to and approve of operations they had no role in shaping and a strategy they had no role in shaping,” he said.
“This war is both unpopular among the public and, in some cases, the elite, and it could take a direction that European allies can’t shape. That’s not a good recipe for cooperation,” he added.
Iran has responded to the US-Israeli attack by launching thousands of missiles and drones at Israel and the Arab Gulf states. Iranian strikes on the latter have targeted US military bases with precision, but Iran has also attacked Gulf civilian infrastructure and energy installations in retaliation against similar Israeli attacks.
The US has been pressing Gulf countries to join in attacking Iran. MEE was the first to report that it had obtained access to King Fahd Air Base in western Saudi Arabia, as its bases closer to the Gulf are pummelled by Iranian drones and missiles. But the US has also pulled military resources like marines and air defences out of East Asia to fight Iran.
The US’s Nato allies are paying a high price for the war on Iran, with gas and oil prices surging at home as a result of Iran wresting control of the Strait of Hormuz and curating which vessels are given safe passage.
Nato countries don't want to be exposed
Iran’s move is shaping up to be a major embarrassment for the Trump administration. The US’s ability to guarantee the security of the flow of energy out of the Gulf is as foundational to its superpower status as the Nato alliance.
Iran is trying to establish an alternative system that favours non-western affiliated vessels, like those that are Pakistani-flagged or carrying energy priced in Chinese renminbi as opposed to US dollars.
Trump himself has gone from threatening to “obliterate” Iran’s energy grid if it does not cede control of the Strait of Hormuz, to simply washing his hands of the strategic chokepoint.
“Just TAKE IT,” Trump wrote in a social media post on Tuesday, directed at Washington’s allies, including the UK, which he said had failed to support the US.
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the USA won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!”
Roughly 20 percent of the world’s energy passes through the Strait of Hormuz. Nato countries, which have shifted away from Russian energy in response to the invasion of Ukraine, have been hit especially hard by the war.
Trump’s threat to leave Iran in control of the Strait of Hormuz, however, could be self-defeating if he wants Nato buy-in to eventually reassert western oversight of the waterway.
Lesser, at the German Marshall Fund, said European allies would likely have to weigh whether to adjust to a new security framework if Tehran were to call the shots.
Why would Nato countries "make themselves more exposed [by assisting the US war on Iran]?” he said. “They can probably imagine this going in a direction that allows certain traffic through Hormuz, but not all,” he said, adding that they would not want to have been seen aiding the US war.
Tehran is, at least publicly, signalling that it will reward even Nato members that break with the US. The Iranian embassy in Spain said on Thursday that Iran would be receptive to any request from Madrid for Spanish vessels to transit the Strait of Hormuz. Spain has a relatively small fleet, so this would be symbolic.
This article was sourced from Middle East Eye.
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