‘Daddy’ Trump revels in war end at NATO summit
US President Donald Trump is revelling in the swift end to war between Iran and Israel, saying he expects a relationship with Tehran that will preclude rebuilding its nuclear program despite uncertainty over damage inflicted by US strikes.
At the NATO summit in The Hague on Wednesday (local time), Trump said his decision to join Israel’s attacks by targeting Iranian nuclear sites with huge bunker-busting bombs had ended the war and was “a victory for everybody”.
He shrugged off an initial US intelligence assessment that Iran’s path to building a nuclear weapon might have been set back only by months, saying the findings were “inconclusive” and he believed the sites had been destroyed.
“It was very severe. It was obliteration,” he said.
Trump was confident Tehran would not try to rebuild its nuclear sites and would instead pursue a diplomatic path towards reconciliation.
He said the US would talk to Iran next week, but that he didn’t think a nuclear agreement was necessary.
If Iran tried to rebuild its nuclear program, “we won’t let that happen. N0.1, militarily we won’t,” he said.
“I think we’ll end up having something of a relationship with Iran to see [to] it,” he said.
Rutte says Trump has been a “good friend” for more than a decade. Photo: AAP
NATO chief coins ‘daddy’ Trump
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NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte has likened Trump to a “daddy” intervening in a schoolyard brawl after he repeatedly berated Middle East foes Israel and Iran this week.
Speaking alongside Rutte at the NATO summit, Trump again criticised Israel and Iran.
“They’ve had a big fight, like two kids in a schoolyard. You know, they fight like hell, you can’t stop them. Let them fight for about two-three minutes, then it’s easy to stop them,” he said.
In response, Rutte laughed and said: “And then daddy has to sometimes use strong language to get [them to] stop.”
Asked later if he had used excessive flattery to keep Trump onside, Rutte said the pair were friends and judgment of his approach was a matter of taste.
The head of the UN’s IAEA nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, said his top priority was ensuring international inspectors could return to Iran’s nuclear sites.
Iran had notified the watchdog that it was taking special measures to protect nuclear material. But inspections must resume to verify what had happened to it, he said.
Jewish immigrants arrive in Tel Aviv after the ceasefire declaration: Photo: AAP
On Tuesday, Trump’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, said that talks between the US and Iran were “promising” and Washington was hopeful for “a long-term peace agreement that resurrects Iran”.
Iran’s parliament approved a bill on Wednesday to suspend co-operation with the IAEA, but such a move would ultimately require approval from Iran’s top security body.
Hours after Trump announced the ceasefire, he claimed credit for preserving it by ordering Israel to halt further attacks with its planes already in flight.
He dropped an F-bomb on live television, saying the two nations had been fighting so long they did not know what they were doing.
Both Iran and Israel declared victory: Israel claiming to have achieved its goals of destroying Iran’s nuclear sites and missiles, and Iran claiming to have forced the end of the war by penetrating Israeli defences with its retaliation.
Iran’s authorities moved swiftly to demonstrate their control after a war that had revealed Israel had deep intelligence about the location of its leaders, including agents operating across the country.
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Iran executed three men on Wednesday who were convicted of collaborating with Israel’s Mossad spy agency and smuggling equipment used in an assassination, the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.
Iran had arrested 700 people accused of ties with Israel during the 12-day conflict, the state-affiliated Nournews reported on Wednesday.
During the war, both Netanyahu and Trump publicly suggested it could end with the toppling of Iran’s entire system of clerical rule if its leaders did not yield.
But after the ceasefire, Trump said he did not want to see “regime change” in Iran. He said it would bring chaos at a time when he wanted the situation to settle down.
Big NATO commitment
NATO leaders have backed the big increase in military spending that Trump had demanded, and restated their commitment to defend each other from attack.
While Trump got what he wanted at the meeting, which was tailor-made for him, his NATO allies will be relieved that he committed to the military alliance’s fundamental principle of collective defence.
Trump said “we had a great victory here”, adding that he hoped that the additional funds would be spent on military hardware made in the US.
However, he threatened to punish Spain after Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez declared it could meet its NATO commitments while spending much less than the new target of 5 per cent of GDP.
“You know, they (Spain) are doing very well… And that economy could be blown right out of the water when something bad happens,” Trump said, adding that Spain would get a tougher trade deal from the US than other European Union countries.
NATO endorsed the higher defence spending goal – a response to Trump and to Europeans’ fears of the growing Russian threat following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
“We reaffirm our ironclad commitment to collective defence as enshrined in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – that an attack on one is an attack on all,” the brief communique from the 32 allies said.
Asked to clarify his stance on Article 5, Trump said: “I stand with it. That’s why I’m here. If I didn’t stand with it, I wouldn’t be here.”
Trump had long demanded that other countries step up their spending to reduce NATO’s heavy reliance on the US.
Despite an appearance of general agreement, French President Emmanuel Macron raised the issue of the steep import tariffs threatened by Trump, and the damage they may do to transatlantic trade, as a barrier to increased military spending.
“We can’t say we are going to spend more and then, at the heart of NATO, launch a trade war,” Macron said, calling it “an aberration”.
He said he had raised it several times with Trump.
The new spending target – to be achieved over a decade – is a jump worth hundreds of billions of dollars a year from the current goal of 2 per cent of GDP, although it will be measured differently.
