Washington, DC: US president Donald Trump, miffed over most of Europe’s decision not to support the war against Iran, has said that he is strongly considering pulling out of NATO.
Calling the alliance a “paper tiger”, he said that the US would reconsider its membership.
“Oh yes, I would say (it’s) beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way,” Trump told The Telegraph.
This is indication that the Trump administration no longer sees Europe as a reliable defence partner. Nearly all its NATO partners rejected his demand to send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which was closed by Iran after the US-Israeli strikes on February 28, sending oil prices spiralling and threatening a global recession, as reported by News18.
“Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe. And I didn’t do a big sale. I j
ust said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic,” Trump said.
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us,” the Republican leader fumed.
Singling out British prime minister Keir Starmer for refusing to get involved in the war against Iran, Trump said: “You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work.”
US secretary of state Marco Rubio had previously remarked that America may reassess its relationship with NATO once the war against Iran concludes.
“If now we have reached a point where the NATO alliance means that we can’t use those bases… then NATO is a one-way street,” he had said.
“I think there’s no doubt that, unfortunately, once this conflict is over, we’ll have to take a fresh look at that relationship. We’ll need to reconsider what NATO brings to our country within that alliance,” Rubio told Fox News.
He was “glad” Rubio made the comments, Trump told The Telegraph. The US will not take responsibility for securing the Strait of Hormuz, he clarified, asserting that countries dependent on the key oil transit route should manage their own interests.