The war on Iran was neither inevitable nor necessary. As recently as March 3, Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Rafael Grossi said the IAEA “has found no evidence that Iran is building a nuclear bomb.” On March 18, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee that since the first round of bombing Iran in Operation Midnight Hammer, “[t]here has been no efforts… to try to rebuild their enrichment capability.” She testified only that Iran “could… begin to develop a militarily viable ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile] before 2035, should Tehran attempt to pursue the capability.” The 2025 report by the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency offered the similar formulation that “Iran has space launch vehicles it could use to develop a militarily-viable ICBM by 2035 should Tehran decide to pursue the capability.” During the negotiations that were ongoing when the bombs began to fall, Iran had offered a whole menu of options that assured there was no pathway to a bomb.
The United States opted for an offensive war of choice. The White House made that choice unilaterally. That is not hegemony: that is primacy that expects its vassal states to follow. NATO allies and EU friends were not consulted. Gulf States and Muslim partners lobbied with ferocity against it. Neither the American relationship with NATO nor with the Gulf States will end, but both have been badly damaged and will not look the same in the future.
Article 5 of NATO’s North Atlantic Treaty states that “The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all.” In the event of such an attack, NATO members are to “assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.” Any such actions taken must “immediately be reported to the Security Council.”
The United States was not attacked by Iran and, so, has no recourse to Article 5. The U.S. action was also not referred to the Security Council. Nonetheless, U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly demanded that NATO come to America’s assistance in the war. On March 20, Trump posted that “Without the U.S.A., NATO IS A PAPER TIGER!” He complained that “They didn’t want to join the fight to stop a Nuclear Powered Iran” and that “they complain about the high oil prices they are forced to pay, but don’t want to help open the Strait of Hormuz.” He said that the NATO nations are “COWARDS,” threateningly adding that “we will REMEMBER!”
Faced with a war in which they were not consulted, in which the goals are not clear, and in which the illegality and avoidability are, America’s NATO allies have redefined the relationship. When it comes to accepting U.S. orders, it seems a red line has been crossed. They are being ordered to enter a war about which they were not consulted, and that has no legal justification nor stated outcome, and whose apparent outcome does not benefit them. There is a new canyon between the leader of NATO and its followers.
Trump says most of America’s NATO allies have declined the request to enter the war in Iran. “I think NATO is making a very foolish mistake,” he said. “[t]he United States have to remember that because we think it’s pretty shocking.”
NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said, “There are absolutely no plans whatsoever for NATO to get dragged into this or being part of it.” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said, “NATO is a defensive alliance, not an interventionist one. And that is precisely why NATO has no place here at all.” Germany’s president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, went one step further, calling the war on Iran a “violation of international law.” Spain’s Pedro Sánchez agreed, rejecting the United State’s “unilateral military escalation” and calling for “NO… violations of international law.” French President Emmanuel Macron declared that the strikes on Iran “were conducted outside international law, which we cannot approve of.” Luxembourg’s Deputy Prime Minister called Trump’s demand “blackmail.”
Asked whether the EU would contribute to an operation to open the Strait of Hormuz, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen insisted that the EU has “been very clear” that “they could envisage an operation” only “when the hostilities end.” EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas said, “This is not Europe’s war.”
These are not polite, diplomatic calibrations of participation. They are defenses of the NATO agreement and redefinitions of the relationship with the United States.
It is not only America’s relationship with NATO that is being redefined. It is also the relationship with the Gulf States and the wider Muslim world.
Iran has worked hard in the last few years to reestablish and mend relations with the Gulf States, as well as Egypt and Turkey. Those efforts have been undermined by Iran’s bombing of its Gulf neighbours, and the emerging relationship has been severely damaged. Faced with an existential threat, Iran likely did not adopt that strategy lightly. Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian apologized and said that Iran would cease targeting neighboring countries “unless an attack originated from there.” But U.S. President Donald Trump exploded that pathway to de-escalation by claiming that, with this act of diplomacy, Iran “surrendered to its Middle East neighbors,” promising that the U.S. will expand its targets and threatening Iran with “complete destruction and certain death.”
The U.S. continued using bases and airspace in the Gulf for its operations against Iran. Three U.S. fighter jets that were shot down were in Kuwaiti airspace when they were hit, and a refueling aircraft that crashed was in Iraqi airspace. Jennifer Kavanagh, Senior Fellow & Director of Military Analysis at Defense Priorities, told me that “official U.S. Army accounts provide clear evidence that the U.S. has launched PRSM missiles from HIMARS in either Kuwait or Bahrain.” An explosion in Bahrain that injured 32 people that was originally blamed on Iran, has now been shown by an analysis to have been the result of interceptors fired from a U.S.-operated Patriot air defense battery in Bahrain.
But it is not only Iran that the Gulf States are angry at. They are also angry at the United States who would not listen to them and who first dragged them into a painful war and then failed to defend them.
Annelle Sheline, research fellow in the Middle East program at the Quincy Institute, told me that “the Gulf States are furious with the U.S. for ignoring their warnings that attacking Iran would prove disastrous.” Once confident in the American security umbrella that covered them, Shelline says that now “they must grapple with the reality that the presence of U.S. military bases and other assets are proving a much greater liability than a source of security.”
Like the relationship with NATO, the security relationship with the Gulf States will not end. But it will also not be the same. The Gulf States “are likely reconsidering the wisdom of relying so heavily on the U.S. for security, which Washington has actively undermined,” Shelline says.
New bilateral and regional security relationships that were already being considered have likely gained urgency. Saudi Arabia has already signed a security alliance with nuclear-armed Pakistan. Led by Turkey, Egypt, and Pakistan, there have been calls, even preceding the war on Iran, for a regional Muslim security umbrella.
In the end, Trump will go home. His brief “excursion” will end. But the Gulf States and Iran will still exist side by side. As Dr. Al-Ansari, the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Qatar, recently said, “Iran has been here for a millennia. The people in this region have been here for a millennia. Nobody’s going anywhere… We will live next to each other, we will be neighbors for the future of humankind and we have to find ways of living next to each other.”
Much damage has been done to Iran, to the environment, to international law and to nuclear non-proliferation. But the war on Iran has also done much damage to some of America’s key relationships, including its relationship with NATO and the Gulf States.
