NATO Allies Betrayed U.S. During Iran War Crisis
European NATO allies denied the U.S. bases, airspace, and assets during the Iran war — exposing a one-sided alliance that Washington is now reconsidering from the ground up.
When American servicemembers were fighting and dying in the Persian Gulf — 13 killed, oil shipping through the Strait of Hormuz choked to a near-standstill — Europe's NATO allies were slamming doors. No bases. No airspace. No naval assets. Just lectures about international law from governments whose economies depend on the very waterway they refused to help reopen.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told Fox News on March 31 that the United States will re-examine NATO's value after the Iran war ends. President Donald Trump went further on April 1, calling NATO a "paper tiger" and declaring withdrawal "beyond reconsideration." Asked by The Telegraph whether he would pull out, Trump replied: "Wouldn't you if you were me?"
The cascade of European refusals didn't merely strain the alliance — it exposed a structural rot. Spain closed its airspace to U.S. military aircraft and denied access to the Rota and Morón bases. "We don't authorise either the use of military bases or the use of airspace for actions related to the war in Iran," Spanish Defense Minister Margarita Robles stated flatly.
Italy rejected U.S. bomber landings at Sigonella Air Base in Sicily. France blocked overflight for planes carrying military supplies to Israel. Austria and Switzerland cited neutrality to deny airspace access. Poland declined to relocate Patriot air defense systems from Europe to the Middle East. The refusals came in sequence, each one landing like another door bolted shut.
All of this unfolded as Iranian closures since Feb. 28 reduced traffic through the Strait of Hormuz — where 20 percent of global oil passes daily — by 95 percent. Brent crude briefly touched $120 per barrel. U.S. gasoline crossed $4 per gallon. European economies, deathly dependent on that waterway, felt every dollar of it.
Yet European NATO members contributed zero naval assets to reopen the strait. The hypocrisy is stark.
"This is the worst moment that NATO has faced," former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder told Axios. The crisis lays bare a dynamic historian Victor Davis Hanson describes with precision: America provides the security; Europe withholds the cooperation.
Hanson argued in The Epoch Times that "European demands for Iranian containment never included European willingness to share the burden when the United States acted." He wrote that Trump's criticism "ripped off a happy-face scab and exposed a festering wound of increasingly anti-American hypocrisy beneath." The metaphor is blunt — and it fits.
The United Kingdom's position was its own kind of contradiction. London allowed U.S. bombers to use British bases, but only for defensive missions against Iranian attacks on British interests. Prime Minister Keir Starmer nevertheless declared, "This is not our war" — even after an Iranian missile struck the British base at Akrotiri, Cyprus.
Starmer's government then convened a meeting of nearly 40 countries on April 2 to discuss reopening the Strait of Hormuz — and did not invite the United States. "Whatever the pressure, whatever the noise, I am the British prime minister and I have to act in our national interests," Starmer told reporters. Washington absorbed that message.
Trump's frustration boiled over on Truth Social. On March 20, he called European allies "cowards" and declared: "You'll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won't be there to help you anymore, just like you weren't there for us."
He singled out France by name. "The Country of France wouldn't let planes headed to Israel, loaded up with military supplies, fly over French territory," Trump wrote. "France has been VERY UNHELPFUL with respect to the 'Butcher of Iran,' who has been successfully eliminated! The U.S.A. will REMEMBER!!!" The all-caps rage of a president who has finally stopped pretending the alliance is working.
Rubio framed the refusals as a question of fundamental purpose. "If we've reached a point where the NATO alliance means we can't use those bases to defend America's interests, then NATO becomes a one-way street," he told Fox News. One-way streets, eventually, get closed.
The refusals were driven by European socialist leaders who turned a strategic disagreement into an ideological statement. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told parliament: "This is not the same scenario as the illegal war in Iraq. We are facing something far worse. Much worse." He called it an "absurd and illegal war." Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni condemned the military operation as "outside the scope of international law." French President Emmanuel Macron, adopting his favored tone of weary statesmanship, told Trump: "This is not a show. We are talking about war and peace."
Hanson drew the contrast with Europe's Ukraine posture — five years of urgent requests for American solidarity on Europe's own doorstep. "Ukraine was not in NATO," he noted. "Nonetheless, there were urgent European requests for the United States to honor the spirit of NATO solidarity." When the shoe was on the other foot, that spirit evaporated.
The Iran war has killed at least 13 U.S. service members. Iran launched at least 23 attacks on commercial vessels in the Strait of Hormuz, killing 11 crew members, according to Lloyd's List Intelligence analysis. A NATO summit scheduled for Ankara in July will now convene under the shadow of all of it — the dead, the closed strait, the slammed doors.
With daily oil traffic through the Strait of Hormuz down 95 percent and Europe's governments refusing to lift a finger to restore it, the question is no longer whether the transatlantic alliance is in crisis. It is whether an alliance built on burden-sharing can survive decades of proof that only one side was ever willing to carry the weight.