Recent U.S. complaints about NATO allies and threats to quit the alliance are pushing European countries to seek alternative security arrangements, Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Tuesday.
After European countries declined to send their navies to open up the Strait of Hormuz to global shipping following the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran on 28 February, U.S. President Donald Trump has declared he is considering withdrawing from the alliance, thrusting it into a crisis.
Albares said the decision was entirely up to Trump, but underscored that NATO allies stood in solidarity with Washington after the 11 September, 2001 attacks.
"NATO is a mutually beneficial alliance for both Europeans and Americans ... But the U.S. administration's remarks and new positions on Euro-Atlantic security are inviting us Europeans to take a leap in terms of our sovereignty and defence matters," Albares told La Sexta TV channel.
"We must take our citizens' security and dissuasion into our own hands," he added.
To do so, he said, the EU should advance toward a pan-European army and integrate its defence industries, but also create a digital single market and a capital markets union.
Spain's leftist government has become one of the most vocal critics of the war on Iran, which it calls illegal and reckless. It has closed Spanish airspace to U.S. planes involved in the strikes and banned them from using jointly operated military bases in southern Spain. Trump has vowed to retaliate against Spain using trade tariffs.
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A TV channel was struck during a live broadcast on Tuesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said, as Russian strikes on Kyiv killed at least three people, the city's Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Meanwhile, drones hit civilian infrastructure in Russia's southwestern Saratov region.
U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) said its forces destroyed five Iranian crude oil carriers after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) allegedly launched two ballistic missile attacks against a U.S. Navy warship over the past two days.
Wildfires have broken out in Türkiye’s Antalya province, forcing hundreds of people to evacuate as strong winds fuelled the flames.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) said on Wednesday they attacked two U.S. vessels and eight oil tankers in the Persian Gulf, calling the strikes a response to a U.S. attack on five Iranian tankers.
Saudi Arabia is now facing pressure from both ends of the Arabian Peninsula. While the crisis around the Strait of Hormuz is disrupting Gulf shipping and energy flows, fighting has intensified in western Yemen, bringing the Houthis back into direct confrontation with the kingdom.
Iran has warned it will retaliate against any future U.S. attacks, saying American energy interests and infrastructure across the Gulf could become targets in a further escalation of the conflict.
Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said on Sunday that the United States must recognise that the “rules of the game” in its war against Iran had changed “before it is too late”, a day after Washington struck several Iranian tankers in the Gulf.
An Iranian tanker was hit by U.S. forces on Saturday near Iran's key oil export hub, Kharg Island, in the Gulf, the semi-official Iranian news agency Tasnim reported.
U.S. efforts to squeeze Iran’s economy through an oil blockade and sanctions are becoming increasingly difficult for Tehran to withstand, according to three senior Iranian sources. Washington is escalating pressure in hopes of securing concessions in future negotiations.
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