Iran is ‘the elephant in the room’ as NATO meets amid escalation fears
Global News
The two-day NATO summit is set to focus on boosting allies' defence spending, but is starting a day after Iran retaliated against U.S. military strikes on its nuclear facilities.
NATO allies will try to ensure this week’s summit isn’t derailed by the fallout from U.S. military strikes on Iran, experts say, but the conflict may still be “the elephant in the room.”
U.S. President Donald Trump late Monday announced that a ceasefire between Israel and Iran would be phased in over a 24-hour period. However, the prospect of lasting peace between Iran, the U.S. and the wider Middle East remained uncertain Tuesday, with Iran and Israel continuing to trade strikes and Trump openly voicing his frustration.
The two-day gathering at The Hague is set to focus on boosting allies’ defence spending and reaffirming support for Ukraine, but is starting a day after Iran launched retaliatory missile strikes on a U.S. air base in Qatar.
Those attacks are unlikely to trigger NATO’s Article 5 commitment to collective self-defence, however, experts say. That’s because any NATO response to the conflict could further risk fraying the alliance.
“NATO doesn’t really have a mandate to get involved in the Middle Eastern conflict, and they are struggling to just keep NATO hanging together,” said Andrea Charron, a political science professor and director of the Centre for Defence and Security Studies at the University of Manitoba.
“I don’t think the Trump administration wants to negotiate for consensus in the protection of the U.S.”
All NATO allies must agree on answering an Article 5 invocation with self-defence military actions to support a member under attack. Article 5 is the principle of collective defence: an attack against one member of the military alliance constitutes an attack against all and will spur a joint response.
To date, Article 5 has only been invoked once, after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the U.S., which led to limited NATO operations supporting American forces in the Middle East. Those operations were ultimately overshadowed by the coalition mission against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.
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