Trump Threatens to Pull U.S. Out of NATO Amid Fallout Over Iran War. Can He Legally Do That?
· Time
President Donald Trump said he is strongly considering pulling the United States out of NATO after allied nations opted not to actively join the Iran war.
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“Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration. I was never swayed by NATO,” Trump said when asked if he would reconsider the U.S.' membership after the conflict. “I always knew they were a paper tiger, and Putin knows that too, by the way.”
In mid-March, Trump warned NATO allies of a “very bad” future should they not help secure the Strait of Hormuz. European countries responded to Trump with caution and resistance, declining to send warships to the vital trade waterway.
Trump criticized the nations for not stepping up, insisting his call for action had been a “test.”
“We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us,” he told British newspaper the Telegraph in an interview published Wednesday morning.
The U.S. President went on to single out the U.K., issuing another public rebuke of British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has refused, beyond defensive measures, to be an active participant in the Iran war.
“You don’t even have a navy. You’re too old and had aircraft carriers that didn’t work,” Trump claimed, but he declined to advise Starmer on defense matters when asked if the U.K. leader should be spending more in that area.
“I’m not going to tell him what to do. He can do whatever he wants. It doesn’t matter. All Starmer wants is costly windmills that are driving your energy prices through the roof,” he said.
Starmer responded to Trump’s remarks Wednesday morning, defending his own position to maintain distance from the war, despite pressure from outside voices.
“Whatever the pressure on me and others, whatever the noise, I'm going to act in the British national interest in all the decisions that I make, and that's why I've been absolutely clear that this is not our war, or we're not going to get dragged into it,” he said during a press briefing.
Starmer also reaffirmed his stance on NATO, telling reporters that the U.K. remains “fully committed” to the alliance.
“NATO is the single most effective military alliance the world has ever seen. It has kept us safe for many decades,” he argued.
The U.S. and Iran are currently in talks to end the war, although officials from both sides have presented differing assessments on the progress of such negotiations.
Trump, via a Truth Social update, said Wednesday morning that Iran had "just asked the United States of America for a cease-fire." He said the deal would be considered when the Strait of Hormuz is "open, free, and clear." Until then, he vowed, the U.S. will be "blasting Iran into oblivion."
Trump’s latest remarks on NATO, meanwhile, echo those delivered by top members of his Administration.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in an interview with Fox News on Tuesday, said the U.S. may need to “re-examine” its relationship with NATO once the war ends.
"We are going to have to re-examine whether or not this alliance that has served this country well for a while is still serving that purpose, or is it now become a one-way street where America is simply in a position to defend Europe, but when we need the help of our allies, they’re going to deny us basing rights and they’re going to deny us overflight," he said.
Though Rubio did not name specific countries, Trump has repeatedly singled out the U.K. for its initial refusal to allow U.S. forces to use British bases for strikes on Feb. 28. Spain has also denied the U.S. permission to use jointly-operated bases to attack Iran and earlier this week closed its airspace to U.S. planes involved in the war.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also addressed the Trump Administration’s frustrations with NATO.
“A lot has been laid bare, a lot has been shown to the world, about what our allies would be willing to do for the United States of America,” he told reporters Tuesday. “When we ask for additional assistance… we get questions, or roadblocks, or hesitations.”
“You don’t have much of an alliance if you have countries who are not willing to stand with you when you need them,” he added.
What is NATO and when did the U.S. join the alliance?
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 and there are now 32 countries in the Western alliance.
According to NATO, the organization was founded based on three principles: “Deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration.”
The U.S., Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, and the United Kingdom signed the Washington Treaty, or the North Atlantic Treaty, in April 1949.
The treaty, which still forms the basis of NATO today, consists of 14 Articles.
During his first term in the White House (and the early months of his second term), Trump aired his grievances with NATO, largely over defense spending and how much each member country contributes. He argued that the U.S. shouldn’t have to pay the most towards defense.
At the 2025 Hague summit, most allies committed to "investing 5% of GDP annually on core defence requirements as well as defence-and security-related spending by 2035." Trump referred to the decision as a "big win."
Can Trump legally pull the U.S. out of NATO?
The U.S. has been a core NATO member since its founding, though Trump has previously refused to rule out withdrawing from the alliance—most recently in January during a dispute over his ambitions to annex Greenland.
The National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 “sought to place a firm legal brake on any future attempt to pull the United States out of NATO by prohibiting a President from doing so without either a two-thirds Senate super-majority or an act of Congress,” Ilaria Di Gioia, a senior lecturer in American law at Birmingham City University, told TIME in January, after Trump refused to rule out leaving NATO amid the tussle over Greenland.
“Yet those legal constraints remain far from solid," she added.
Gioia said there are a number of ways in which Trump could look for a work-around, should he seriously wish to pull the U.S. out of the alliance.
“Trump could seek to circumvent Congress’ statutory constraint by invoking presidential authority over foreign policy, an approach he has floated before to bypass congressional limits on treaty withdrawal,” Gioia told TIME over email.
“It is unclear whether any party would have legal standing to challenge such a move in court. The most plausible plaintiff would be Congress itself, but with the Republicans in control of the Senate, political support for such a lawsuit is far from assured,” she continued. “The result would be a constitutional confrontation between the Executive [branch] and Congress, with the courts as the likely referee.”
Trump “could frame NATO withdrawal as necessary for national defense, citing broad Commander-in-Chief authority (Article II, Section 2),” she said, but there would need to be a strong argument to support that.
Curtis Bradley, a distinguished service professor of law at the University of Chicago, told TIME that there is, at least, some precedent, citing President Jimmy Carter's withdrawal from a mutual defense treaty with Taiwan in 1978, which was formalized in 1980. But still, given the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024, if Trump were to pull the U.S. out of NATO, it would be far from easy and there could well be legal fallout.
Bradley said that due to the Supreme Court often ruling in favor of the Trump Administration, Congress may find it difficult to win against him in the courts, but legal backlash could stem from elsewhere.
“If there are contractors with NATO that could lose money from the U.S. withdrawal, that would be an economic injury that would potentially give them a standing to sue,” he said.
Despite Trump having options, the legalities involved are, at best, murky, the experts agreed.
“The very idea of a U.S. exit erodes trust, cohesion, and the credibility of collective defense,” said Gioia, highlighting that the mere suggestion of the U.S. leaving NATO causes a lot of damage. “Trump’s repeated questioning of the alliance weakens deterrence, shakes European security planning, and emboldens adversaries.”
Referring to the alliance as the “most important mutual defense treaty of the post-WWII era,” Bradley said a U.S. exit would be surprising, and that it’s far more likely we’ll see continued “tensions with NATO” rather than a formal withdrawal.
—Additional reporting by Callum Sutherland