Trump threatens more NATO members with troop withdrawals

US President Donald Trump said he could consider withdrawing some American troops stationed in Italy and Spain, after making a similar threat toward Germany amid a deepening rift with European allies over the war with Iran.

Trump threatened earlier this week to reduce the number of US troops in Germany, continuing to deride NATO as a “paper tiger” following other member states’ refusal to back the US-Israeli bombing campaign in the Middle East. On Friday, the Pentagon said it would withdraw around 5,000 of the roughly 36,000 active-duty service members from Germany.

Asked by a reporter in the Oval Office on Friday whether he would consider removing troops from Spain or Italy, Trump replied: “Yeah, probably. Look, why shouldn’t I?”

“Italy has not been of any help to us. And Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible,” Trump said. “It’s one thing if they said nicely, or if they said, ‘Okay, we’ll help,’ but the help is a little slow,” he added.

Trump reiterated that he considers NATO ungrateful for US military support to Ukraine. “We helped them with Ukraine. You know, they made a mess out of Ukraine, a total mess,” he said.

Spain denied the use of a naval base near Cadiz for attacks on Iran and closed its airspace to US planes involved in the campaign. Italy similarly refused to allow the US to use an air base in Sicily.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez has strongly criticized the bombing of Iran. “From my point of view, this war is illegal, it is a big mistake,” he said last month. In a recent op-ed in Le Monde diplomatique, Sanchez again condemned “the unilateral attempts by the United States to engineer regime change in Venezuela and now Iran – all without seeking even a veneer of international approval.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni has said the war with Iran has added to instability in the Middle East and driven up energy prices. She also criticized Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV over his opposition to the conflict as “unacceptable.”