Donald Trump’s head-spinning Iran policy

Good morning and welcome to White House Watch, coming to you live from The Hague, where the Nato summit is under way. Ahead of Donald Trump’s arrival in the Netherlands, let’s get into:

Donald Trump’s peacemaking dreams may have been dashed yet again — and he’s not happy with Israel and Iran.

Yesterday he announced a ceasefire between the two foes, after shrugging off Tehran’s retaliation against the US for bombing three of Iran’s key nuclear sites.

But shortly after Israel and Iran said they’d indeed agreed to the ceasefire, Israel accused Iran of breaking it and vowed to retaliate (Iranian state television denied Tehran had violated the ceasefire). Israel struck Iran despite Trump’s warning not to retaliate, though Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said he held off on further attacks after talking to the US president.

Trump was particularly frustrated with Netanyahu this morning.

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal, they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before, the biggest load that we’ve seen. I’m not happy with Israel,” Trump told reporters as he left the White House, bound for The Hague.

“You don’t go out in the first hour [of the ceasefire and] just drop everything you have on them,” he added. “I’m really unhappy” with Israel.

The US president said both countries had violated the ceasefire and “that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing”.

After boarding Air Force One, he took to Truth Social to insist that the ceasefire was holding and warn Israel to hold fire against Iran.

“ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS,” the US president wrote on his Truth Social platform. “IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

The president’s handling of the war between Israel and Iran — and his decision to join in the bombing — has been full of mixed signals.

After Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Al Udeid air base in Qatar, the biggest and arguably most important US base in the Middle East, Trump seemed poised to send America careering back towards the interventionist Middle East strategy of the George W Bush era.

But he quickly had some de-escalatory messaging, thanking Iran for giving Washington a heads-up about the strikes, and describing the base attack as “very weak”.

Trump’s head-spinning moves including striking Iran, floating “regime change” in Tehran and then reconciliation — all in 48 hours — show that major national and global security issues are not exempt from his approach to policy: blustery threats, dealmaking attempts, extreme measures and sudden declarations of victory.

Even though Trump announced a ceasefire, we can’t forget about the seeds of regime change he planted. His fresh pressure on Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to bring Iran back to the negotiating table will loom, no matter what happens with this apparently broken truce.

The latest headlines

What we’re hearing

Ahead of the Nato summit, the group’s European members couldn’t seem to get a straight answer from the US on whether it’s planning to pull any troops or weapons from Europe.

“What worries me is the debate over the US presence in Europe will take place after the summit, when the summit is supposed to sort of anchor the defence pledge. So the Europeans don’t know what they’re signing up for,” Camille Grand, a former Nato assistant secretary-general, told the FT’s Henry Foy. “The [US] administration is leaving all its options open.”

And Trump has put a price tag on Nato’s future: he wants each ally to spend 5 per cent of their GDP on defence. This would apply to the US, too, but on Friday he said “I don’t think we should, but I think they should.”

That 5 per cent demand will be the primary focus of the meeting, and Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte had corralled Nato members into basically agreeing to it, but unity has been torpedoed by Spain’s last-minute exception.

Also high on the priority list will be convincing the Nato-sceptic US president that the alliance is trustworthy and avoiding any dust-ups with him, which suddenly seem more likely given the new fracture among the Europeans.

But as the US has softened some of its rhetoric on Europe, its leaders are more optimistic about the alliance’s future than they were when Trump berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February.

Make no mistake though, regardless of what happens today and tomorrow, the future of Nato — and the US’s role in the alliance — remain uncertain. And the US’s allies will probably breathe a collective sigh of relief when Air Force One heads back home.

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