Trump says he is 'absolutely' considering withdrawing US from Nato [View all]

The president, a longtime critic of Nato, has stepped up criticism after allies refused to join the US-Israel war on Iran

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/01/trump-says-he-is-absolutely-considering-withdrawing-us-from-nato


Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump at the Opera House of the Kennedy Center. Photograph: Alex Wong/Getty Images

Donald Trump has said he is “absolutely” considering withdrawing the US from Nato, warning that the matter was “beyond reconsideration” in the wake of the refusal of US allies to join the US-Israeli war against Iran. The president’s threats, his most determined to date, have left the alliance facing its worst crisis in its 77-year history, a former US ambassador has warned.

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. He told Reuters news agency on Wednesday he was “absolutely without question” considering withdrawal after telling the Telegraph the matter was “beyond reconsideration”, insisting he had never been “swayed by Nato”. He signalled that he would express his disgust for Nato in an address to the nation scheduled for Wednesday evening.

It could be politically and constitutionally difficult for Trump to bring about formal withdrawal from the 1949 Washington treaty, Nato’s founding document, but Ivo Daalder, US permanent representative at Nato headquarters from 2009 to 2013, argued the serious damage to the alliance has 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.”

Trump launched the war on Iran on 28 February in partnership with the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, but without consulting Nato allies. He did not invoke Article 5 of the treaty, which triggers collective defence from other members in the event of an “an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America”. Such an attack, which would activate a joint response, had not taken place. More than a month into the war, there is no sign of the regime change or collapse that Trump and Netanyahu had hoped for, and Tehran’s response – closing the economically-vital Strait of Hormuz – has caused an oil price spike and a worldwide shortage of fertiliser and other essential goods, threatening a global recession.

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