United States (US) President Donald Trump welcomes North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) Chief Mark Rutte to the White House on Wednesday, as the war with Iran has pushed US relations with other \u200bmembers of the military alliance to a crisis point.<\/p>\n
The Republican president has threatened to withdraw from the 32-member transatlantic alliance and denounced Washington’s \u200cEuropean allies in recent weeks for what he said was inadequate support for the US-Israeli bombing campaign in Iran.<\/p>\n
Trump said on Tuesday the attacks would be paused after the two sides agreed to a two week ceasefire.<\/p>\n
Trump has called for countries that depend on oil from the Gulf region to break Iran’s chokehold on the Strait of Hormuz, but European countries are unlikely to join \u200bmine-clearing or other missions to free up navigation as long as hostilities continue, according to two European diplomats.<\/p>\n
Iran has vowed to obstruct the vital chokepoint \u200bwith mines until the war ends.<\/p>\n
Rutte, known in Europe as a “Trump whisperer,” has cultivated a warm relationship \u2060with Trump despite the tensions and referred to him last year as a “daddy” handling a schoolyard brawl between Israel and Iran. Another European diplomat described Rutte’s approach to \u200bTrump as deferential but effective.<\/p>\n
Conflict over Iran has worsened transatlantic anxieties over Ukraine, Greenland and military spending, although senior US officials have privately reassured European governments that the \u200badministration remains committed to NATO, according to one of the two European officials, who was involved in such conversations.<\/p>\n
“This is a dangerous point for the transatlantic alliance,” said Oana Lungescu, a former NATO Spokesperson now at the Royal United Services Institute, a London-based think tank.<\/p>\n
–Reuters–<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":22792,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[26],"class_list":["post-31099","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-general_news","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"","published_date":"","news_description":"Trump welcomes North Atlantic Treaty Organisation Chief","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31099","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31099\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31101,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31099\/revisions\/31101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22792"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31099"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=31099"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}