President Trump speaks to members of the media at the White House before boarding Marine One on June 24.
Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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Francis Chung/Politico/Bloomberg via Getty Images
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President Trump is planning to hold a news conference at the conclusion of the NATO summit in the Netherlands as the world watches to see whether a ceasefire between Israel and Iran will endure.
Trump traveled to the summit on Tuesday, the morning after announcing the ceasefire, which came days after the United States joined Israel’s attacks on key Iranian nuclear facilities. Trump has claimed that the U.S. strikes destroyed Iran’s ability to build nuclear weapons, but an early classified U.S. intelligence assessment said the bombs caused only limited damage, setting Tehran’s nuclear program back “a few months.”
The White House has dismissed that assessment, and Trump has bristled at the suggestion that the operation was anything but successful.
At NATO, allies were working on a new commitment that would see countries commit 5% of their gross domestic product to defense spending by 2035, up from 2%. Trump has long called for allies to boost their spending, saying that the United States was paying more than its fair share. The U.S. contributes about 3.5% of its GDP to NATO.
But on his way to the summit, Trump told reporters that the new goal didn’t apply to U.S. spending. “They’re in Europe. We’re not,” he said. He also expressed some ambivalence to Article 5, the mutual defense clause in the NATO treaty that says an attack on one member is considered an attack on all, adding to long-held fears among European allies that Trump would not back them in the event of an attack.