US President Donald Trump claims he is considering to pull the US out of NATO, a move that would dismantle the world’s most powerful military alliance and leave Western security in disarray.
Trump said he was ‘absolutely’ considering quitting the 32-nation bloc and planned to savage his allies over their failure to support the war against Iran in a prime-time address to the nation at 9pm ET on Wednesday.
‘I’ll be discussing my disgust with NATO,’ Trump told Reuters. Asked if he was thinking about leaving, he said: ‘Oh, absolutely without question. Wouldn’t you do that if you were me?’
Trump called the bloc, founded in 1949, a ‘paper tiger’ that America’s adversaries do not take seriously, with Europe’s refusal to support his war against Iran appearing to be the final straw in his long-running feud with its members.
‘I would say it’s beyond reconsideration,’ Trump told the Daily Telegraph in a separate interview. ‘I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.’
Trump’s threat comes as European allies have turned their backs on the Iran war, with France’s Emmanuel Macron calling the US strikes ‘outside of international law’ and Britain’s Keir Starmer declaring it ‘not our war.’
European nations, including Italy and Spain, have barred US warplanes from landing at bases and flying through their airspace as Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz sends global oil prices skyrocketing.
Trump has told allies they should ‘go to the Strait and just take it’ and added that they should either buy US crude or ‘go get your own oil.’
