As expected, President Trump took the opportunity to chastise NATO for its lack of participation in the Iran war while hosting the alliance's Secretary General Mark Rutte at the White House.
"We didn’t need help on this at all. We demolished them in literally the first week," Trump said of Iran before reporters, while seated across from Rutte. That's when the president said, "But it would have been nice if they would have said, ‘We’d like to help.’ We didn’t even need it, but it would have been nice if they said that."
Throughout the conflict Trump has openly mused about pulling the United States out of the military alliance - or also at least withholding significant defense funding, and suggested in the Wednesday meeting that he'd be discussing the issue with Rutte behind closed doors.
"We’re going to be discussing what took place, and we’ll see what happens," he said.
Despite general negativity heaped on NATO's lax response to the Hormuz crisis and Iran campaign, Trump still offered a little praise of Rutte - who has long been generally supportive of the Trump White House.
Rutte in turn hailed Trump as "the leader of the free world" and stressed "I really want to make clear how important it is what you are doing on Iran."
"This is, first of all, about the nuclear capability Iran was basically getting its hands on - and it would have been a threat to the region. It would’ve been a threat to the whole world. This is a country that is exporting chaos, is exporting terrorism," Rutte described, without providing evidence of these series of claims.
Rutte tried a bit of flattery, which didn't exactly calm Trump's verbal attacks on NATO:
"I know there have been isolated cases about which you are really disappointed, but generally speaking your European allies have been there," Rutte said.
Trump appeared unconvinced, at times interrupting Rutte to disagree with him, though he praised his leadership.
"You really have done a good job, and I think if anybody else were in that position, we wouldn't even be meeting today, to be honest with you, because we were let down," Trump said.
Trump wasn't willing to let Rutte dodge:
“I know there have been debates about whether your allies in Europe were with you enough. I just want to say one thing,” Rutte said.
“They weren’t,” Trump interjected with a two-word comeback.
“Let me say one thing,” Rutte pleaded. “I know you think that [and] your irritation about that, but when you look at the numbers, 4,000- 5,000 US planes [took] off from bases in Europe in the six weeks this war took place.”
With props in hand, Rutte unveiled what he's calling the "Trump trillion"...
In a couple weeks, July 7, is when the big annual NATO summit is slated to begin in Ankara, Turkey. The timing of Turkey hosting the gathering is interesting, given the country has been opposed to the US attacks on Iran, and has become a top regional enemy of Israel, with the two sides having issued heated and threated rhetoric for months.
Turkey is another US ally which is not going to lift a finger to assist the US in the Gulf area, but in terms of the pending peace deal with Tehran, and the prior signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU), there is broad support.