Iran is the “elephant in the room”, where NATO meets the fears of escalation – my country

NATO allies will try to ensure that this week’s summit does not go out of its path due to the American military strikes IranExperts say, but the conflict may still “the elephant in the room.”

US President Donald Trump late Monday It announced that the ceasefire between Israel and Iran Training will be in stages within more than 24 hours. However, the possibility of a permanent peace between Iran, the United States and the Middle East remained unconfirmed on Tuesday, with Iran and Israel continue to trade strikes and Trump, expressing its frustration openly.

Although he refused to participate in a public position on the conflict, The Secretary -General of Mark Root Root Trump praised For his “decisive work” in a text message, Trump was in the audience on Tuesday.

The two -day gathering in The Hague is scheduled to focus on strengthening the defensive spending of the Allied and reaffirmed support for Ukraine, but it began a day after Iran launched reprisal missile strikes on an American air base in Qatar.

These attacks and any future strikes are unlikely to lead to American assets in the region NATO Article 5 Commitment to defending the collective soul, as experts say. This is because any NATO response to the conflict can risk increasing the enhancement of the alliance.

Andrea Charron, a professor of political science and director of the Center for Defense and Security at the University of Manitoba, said:

“I don’t think the Trump administration wants to negotiate a consensus in the protection of the United States.”

All NATO allies should agree to respond to the invitation of Article 5 with military defense measures to support a member who is attacked. Article 5 is the principle of collective defense: An attack against a member of the military coalition is an attack against everyone and will motivate a common response.

So far, Article 5 has only been called only once, after September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States, which led to limited American forces support in the Middle East. These operations were eventually overwhelmed by the coalition mission against al -Qaeda and Derlban in Afghanistan.

The current situation in the Middle East is completely different.

The Trump administration was designed that it was not following the war with Iran, and that its strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities during the weekend were supporting the mission of Israel – another reason for experts that NATO would not want to participate.

“This is not an operation outside the NATO region at all,” said Andrew Rasioles, a former Canadian Ministry of Defense official and his colleague at the Canadian World Affairs Institute.

“The United States has not been attacked. This is the problem of Israel.”

The government of Qatar said on Monday that it had successfully objected to most of the short and medium -range ballistic missiles launched by Iran at the air base, which includes both American and Qatari forces. We and Qatari officials said there were no losses.

Iran said that the attack in accordance with the number of US bombs that decreased on its nuclear facilities and that the targeted base was outside the populated areas, indicating that Iran wants to cancel the escalation.

Although a large -scale attack on a US military base or embassy in a non -NATO country can be considered a “very provocative” attack on the American soil, Charun, and others questioned that this would be sufficient to stir Article 5.

“The rules are mainly similar to rented properties,” said Christian Lebercht, an older defense and security colleague at the McDonald Lorieer Institute. In the event of an attack on the Qatari base, he said that it is up to Qatar to take revenge on the violation of his sovereignty.

He also compared the current Iranian response to this in 2020 after the United States killed the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Qasim Solimani, who also did not ascend the conflict.

However, he indicated that Turkiye-who had tensions with Iran for a long time-also has a military base in Qatar, and “it is not a matter in the left field completely” whether he could call Article 5 itself if that rule is attacked.

“We reaffirm our commitment to collective defense, as dedicated in Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – that the attack on one of them is an attack on everyone,” says Reuters’s Reuters’ Summit.

Experts agreed that the biggest question is whether the summit could be held together with the development of the Middle East conflict.

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Speaking to reporters on Monday, the Secretary General of the General Finance avoided questions about Iran, saying that the conflict was outside the NATO lands and was not among the main topics of the summit.

However, he said that the American strikes were not a violation of international law – in contrast to the statements made by the leaders of NATO France and Norway – and that Iran should never develop nuclear weapons.

“The allies have repeatedly urged Iran to meet its obligations under the non -spread treaty,” he said.

“This summit revolves around the Atlantic Europe region, making sure that we can defend ourselves against the Russians who suffer from this quickly.”

The summit statement will include only one signal to Russia as a threat to the European Atlantic Security and another for the allies ’commitment to support Ukraine, Reuters said.

NATO summoned Iran to support Russia’s war in Ukraine, including providing drones for the Russian army.

On Monday, the Iranian Foreign Minister met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who offered to mediate in talks between Iran and Israel for a ceasefire.

The main achievement of the NATO summit is expected to be an official agreement between all allies to abide with the aim of new defense spending.

Under the new plan, countries will spend 3.5 percent of GDP on “Basic Defense”-such as weapons and forces-and 1.5 percent on security-related investments such as road air conditioning, ports and bridges for use by military vehicles, protecting pipelines and deterring electronic landing.

This increase, which must be gradually eliminated for more than 10 years, means hundreds of billions of dollars in defense spending.

Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada will meet the previous goal of the coalition, a decade of a decade, with 2 percent of GDP by the end of this fiscal year, with more than 9 billion dollars in new investments.

This newly followed rapid commitment has been announced amid continuous security and commercial negotiations with the United States

Trump called on NATO allies to strengthen defensive spending into five percent and criticized the members who did not meet the old goal. He described Canada as “a low motivation” and “almost less” in the comments on the correspondents on Friday.

This week’s top is seen as Trump’s victory, and experts say he wants to be within reach in Brussels to celebrate the commitment of higher spending.

Lubbrecht said that the American strikes on Iran had sent a strong message to NATO as it did with Russia, China and the Middle East.

He said: “Israel had to do the dirty action (in Iran) … so that the Americans could fly, drop the bomb and leave.” “This is the message to the Europeans: You will have to escalate (and) to do dirty work in terms of deterrence. The same with Canada.

“It is also a message to Putin and Shi Jinping, though, when American interests are at stake and America draws red lines, dependent on Americans to participate.”

– With files from Reuters and Associated Press