President Donald Trump is once again floating the idea of the United States abandoning the long-standing NATO alliance, this time because several U.S. allies have refused to aid his war against Iran.
In an interview with The Telegraph published on Wednesday, Trump was asked if he would reconsider American membership in the alliance, and he responded, “Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration.”
Trump added, “I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and [Russian dictator Vladimir] Putin knows that too, by the way.”
Trump told the paper that he thought NATO nations would be “automatic” in helping him to wage war against the Iranian people, a conflict he is unable to clearly justify to the American public despite weeks of bombing.
From left, Monica Crowley, White House chief of protocol, greets NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte upon arriving to meet with President Donald Trump in August 2025.
The newest complaints come a day after Trump fumed at the leadership of the United Kingdom and France, which joined other nations, like Spain and Italy, in refusing to help America bomb Iran. On his social media account, Trump wrote that the U.K. wasn’t “there for us” in the conflict.
Underscoring why these nations are reluctant to march in lockstep with an unpopular American president, Trump said on Wednesday that “we are blasting Iran into oblivion or, as they say, back to the Stone Ages!!!” He has also advocated for stealing Iran’s resources and sabotaging civilian infrastructure, which would likely constitute war crimes.
Trump has discussed leaving NATO before, but a provision of the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by then-President Joe Biden (and co-authored by now-Secretary of State Marco Rubio), doesn’t make it easy. The provision requires a NATO exit to be authorized by a two-thirds Senate vote or an act of Congress, not just a presidential decree.
NATO was formed in the aftermath of World War II and at the height of the Cold War as an institution designed to preserve global peace and to serve as a check on the Soviet Union. The alliance worked to remove Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from Kuwait after he tried to invade that nation in the 1990s, and has served in a peacekeeping role in multiple global hotspots.
The United States has long been the key to the NATO alliance. But Trump has sought to sabotage the group, fulfilling the dreams of Putin. Putin has complained about NATO opposition to his regional power grabs, including his attempt to take over Ukraine.
The NATO alliance is not perfect, but it has worked for decades—until Trump created an international disaster and demanded that someone else clean up his mess.
