Experts say NATO allies will try to ensure this week’s summit will not derail due to Iran’s military strike, but the conflict may remain “elephants in the room.”
U.S. President Donald Trump announced on Monday night that a ceasefire between Israel and Iran will be phased out within 24 hours. But the prospect of lasting peace between Iran, the United States and the wider Middle East remains uncertain, with Iran and Israel continuing to strike, and Trump publicly expressing his frustration.
The two-day gathering in The Hague will focus on increasing allies’ defense spending and reaffirming support for Ukraine, but begins the day after Iran launched a retaliatory missile strike at U.S. air base in Qatar.
Experts say the attacks are unlikely to trigger NATO Article 5 commitments to collective self-defense. That’s because any NATO response to the conflict could further risk getting caught in the alliance.
“NATO has no authorization to participate in the Middle East conflict, they are working to hang NATO together,” said Andrea Charron, professor of political science at the University of Manitoba and director of the Center for Defense and Security Studies.
“I don’t think the Trump administration wants to negotiate on a consensus on protecting the United States”
All NATO allies must agree to answer Article 5, supporting members under attack with self-defense military operations. Article 5 is the principle of collective defense: an attack on a member of a military alliance constitutes an attack on everyone and will stimulate a joint response.
So far, Article 5 has been invoked only once after the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, which has resulted in limited NATO operations supporting the U.S. military in the Middle East. These actions were ultimately overshadowed by coalition missions against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban.
However, the situation in the Middle East is very different at the moment.
What’s the difference this time?
The Trump administration insists that it is not a war with Iran and that the weekend strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities is a mission to support Israel, another reason experts say NATO doesn’t want to participate.
Get the daily national news
Get news, politics, economics and current events titles delivered to your inbox every day.
“None of this is NATO’s non-regional action,” said Andrew Rasiulis, a Canadian Defense Department official and a researcher at the Canadian Institute of Global Affairs.
“The United States has not been attacked yet. This is an Israeli problem.”
The Qatar government said on Monday that it successfully intercepted most of the short-range ballistic missiles launched by Iran at Al Udeid air base, both with U.S. and Katari forces. U.S. and Katari officials said no casualties were found.
Iran said the attack matched the number of US bombs dropped on its nuclear facilities, and the target base was outside of densely populated areas, indicating that Iran wanted to downgrade.
Charron said that while a full-scale attack on U.S. military bases or embassies of non-NATO countries may be considered a “highly provocative” attack on U.S. soil, others suspect that this is enough to trigger the invocation of Article 5.
“It’s basically like rented property,” said Christian Leuprecht, a senior researcher in defense and security at the MacDonald-Laurier Institute. In the attack on the Qatar base, he said it was up to Qatar to oppose retaliation against breach of its sovereignty.
He also compared the current Iranian response to the escalation of conflict after the U.S. killing of Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani in 2020.
However, he noted that Turkiye, which has long had tensions with Iran, also has a military base in Qatar, “this is not entirely a left-field question” and whether it can call Article 5 itself if the base is attacked.
A prepared text summit statement agreed to by the NATO government said: “We reaffirm our commitment to the collective defense described in Article 5 of the Treaty – an attack on one person is an attack on all.”
How does Iran affect the summit?
Experts believe the bigger question is whether the summit can be combined as the conflict in the Middle East develops.
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte avoided issues regarding Iran in his speech at a reporter on Monday, saying the conflict was outside of NATO’s territory and was not the main theme of the summit.
However, he did say that the U.S. strike was not an act of violation of international law, in stark contrast to statements by NATO French members and Norwegian leaders, and that Iran must never develop nuclear weapons.
“Alls have repeatedly urged Iran to fulfill its obligations under the NPT,” he said.
“This summit is about the Atlantic Europe and ensure we can defend the Russians (the Russians who are really fast recovering).
According to Reuters, the brief summit statement will include only one mention of Russia to threaten the security of the European Atlantic Ocean, and the other is the commitment of allies to support Ukraine.
NATO calls on Iran to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, including providing drones to the Russian military.
Iranian Foreign Minister met with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, who proposed mediation talks between the ceasefire between Iran and Israel.
The main achievement of the NATO summit is expected to be a formal agreement between all allies to achieve new defense spending goals.
Under the new plan, countries will spend 3.5% of their “core defenses” on GDP (such as weapons, troops) and another 1.5% of security-related investments, such as adapting roads, ports and bridges to use for military vehicles, protecting pipelines and blocking Cyberattacks.
The gradual phased increase over more than a decade will mean spending on defense has increased by hundreds of billions of dollars.
Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada will reach the alliance’s previous decade-old GDP target by the end of the fiscal year, with its new investment of more than $9 billion.
New quick commitments announced in ongoing security and trade negotiations with the United States
Trump called on NATO allies to increase defense spending to 5%, and criticized members who did not meet their older goals. He called Canada a “low payer” and “almost the lowest” in his comments to reporters on Friday.
This week’s summit is seen as a victory for Trump, and experts say he wants to stand in Brussels in honor of a higher spending commitment.
Leprecht said the U.S. strike against Iran conveyed a message to NATO as strong as Russia, China and the Middle East.
“Israel has to do dirty work (in Iran) … so Americans can fly in, give up the bomb and leave,” he said. “That’s the message to Europeans: You’ll have to strengthen () do dirty work in deterrence. As with Canada.
“But Putin and Xi Jinping are also a message that when American interests are threatened and the United States draws red lines, it depends on American participation.”
– Documents from Reuters and AP
