NATO Under Pressure: How the Iran War Is Testing the Alliance

The transatlantic alliance that defined Western security for over seven decades is facing unprecedented pressure. U.S. President Donald Trump’s growing demands for increased burden-sharing and repeated threats to withdraw the United States from the alliance have exposed deep fractures within NATO. The escalating confrontation with Iran is rapidly widening these fractures. Trump’s characterization of NATO as a “paper tiger,” alongside Washington’s frustration with allies over their refusal to join a U.S.-led coalition to securitize the Strait of Hormuz, has become a defining fault line that raises critical questions about the limits of collective defense frameworks.

NATO allies are increasingly finding themselves caught between Washington’s demands for solidarity and their own strategic and economic interests. Intra-alliance dynamics are also rapidly evolving, with Turkey playing an increasingly important role in European defense industrialization, and NATO’s strategic footprint expanding beyond its traditional boundaries through growing engagement with its southern neighborhood.

Against this backdrop, the Middle East Council on Global Affairs (ME Council) convened a panel of experts to explore the future of the world’s most consequential security alliance. Panelists examined a range of pressing questions, including how the transatlantic rift over Iran is reshaping the alliance’s cohesion. What are the implications of Trump’s threats to withdraw the United States from NATO? Does the alliance still possess the capacity for collective action? As conflicts become increasingly interconnected and threats become more transnational, could this push NATO toward deeper cooperation with the Middle East? And ultimately, is NATO adapting to a new era of great-power competition, or quietly unraveling?

Giorgio Cafiero 

• Trump wants the U.S. to be to NATO what Soviet Russia was to the Warsaw Pact: doing whatever the U.S. wants and says, alliances not based on equality and balance of power. 

• Trump is acting as an “unhinged” leader, which makes it difficult for the European allies to rely on; signaling the value of loyalty over expertise. 

• The current U.S. administration does not believe there are common goals uniting NATO allies and instead views the alliance through a transactional prism, despite divergent views that cannot be expressed. 

• For both the U.S. and Europe, GCC countries are key partners in areas of security, migration and nuclear capability attainment, making partnerships with the GCC crucial and attractive. 

• The Istanbul Cooperation Initiative (ICI) will be an important institution within the NATO-GCC cooperation framework, but its future development will need to account for realistic limitations, including the lack of Saudi involvement and divergent foreign policy goals within the GCC. 

• Greater dialogue and negotiations within and outside the ICI align with the U.S. interest and pave the way for closer ties between the GCC and European/NATO partners. 

• It has become clear to European countries that reliance on the U.S. for European security guarantees is risky and unpredictable, prompting Europe to become more autonomous and take responsibility for its own security. 

Georgina Wright 

• Europe does not see the shifts in the U.S.-NATO relationship as temporary; previously, U.S. complaints were seen as grievances, but under President Trump, they are seen as leverage. 

• European nations are committed to increasing their defense spending at the expense of education and healthcare, a move that has proven deeply unpopular. 

• The ambiguity of the Trump Administration has made engaging with Washington difficult, but Europe has become receptive to the U.S. demands for greater responsibilities, balancing the relationship with the U.S. and replacing the U.S.’s critical capabilities in the short to long term, a policy of “hoping for the best and planning for the worst.” 

• While there is a strong willingness among European countries to reaffirm their commitment to their Gulf partners, the role and modality of involvement are still being discussed, with cooperation expected to occur at the individual-country level rather than through a NATO organizational approach. 

• Turkey’s dual role, as a NATO ally and a country with close ties in the Middle East, is judged as beneficial or detrimental, depending on the individual European country and its bilateral ties with Turkey, signaling a growing global shift from institutional norm expectations to direct bilateral relations. 

• NATO is a formidable security alliance, and for the alliance to work, all parties need to do their part. The solution to the current crisis is not more spending but better and more strategic spending. 

Rashid Al Mohanadi 

• Gulf countries have always viewed NATO as a good blueprint for security cooperation, for their standards, techniques, and procedures. 

• U.S. attention is shifting from the old world, Europe and the Middle East, towards the East like China. 

• Europe and Gulf countries operate within a norms-based global order and seek to preserve this status by creating collective security architectures, drawing on the global commons they share and benefit from. 

• The risk posed by Iran in the Hormuz Strait can serve as a model for other actors to take similar action in places like the Strait of Malacca. 

• Europe’s existing capabilities in the Bab-al-Mandeb and the CMF, alongside innovative models such as the Qatar-UK Typhoon squadron and the Qatari-Turkish military command structure, point toward a feasible path for regional security built on bilateral and partnership-based arrangements rather than on reliance on the U.S. 

• State-based threats posed by Iran and Israel need to be dealt with in specific ways. With Iran, it is deterrence and conventional military capability, and with Israel, it will be deterrence and managing the relationship through the U.S. 

• The possibility of a NATO-style military alliance among the Gulf, Turkey, Pakistan, and even Egypt is low, but a political alliance among them is not off the table in response to the Israeli and Iranian threats, with some form of it materializing in the Saudi-Pakistan defense pact.