{"id":449848,"date":"2026-04-09T12:58:52","date_gmt":"2026-04-09T10:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/2026\/04\/09\/rutte-comprendo-che-trump-sia-deluso-dagli-alleati-ma-ce-stata-collaborazione-dalla-maggioranza\/"},"modified":"2026-04-09T15:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T13:14:14","slug":"rutte-i-understand-that-trump-is-disappointed-with-allies-but-most-have-been-helpful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/2026\/04\/09\/rutte-i-understand-that-trump-is-disappointed-with-allies-but-most-have-been-helpful\/","title":{"rendered":"Rutte: “I understand that Trump is disappointed with allies, but most have been helpful”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Brussels \u2013 A \u201cfrank and open\u201d discussion, revealing, on the one hand, the US President\u2019s disappointment with NATO allies<\/strong> over their lack of support for Washington and Tel Aviv\u2019s war against Iran<\/a>, and the Atlantic Alliance Secretary-General\u2019s efforts<\/strong> to persuade the tycoon<\/em> that “the US was able to act” against Iran “because many European countries, though not all, honored their commitments.” So, \u201cthe picture is not black and white, but has shades of grey.\u201d But, speaking of images, what is missing for now is the official snapshot of the handshake between the two leaders or of their meeting,\u00a0replaced by the welcome extended to Rutte by the Secretary of State, Marco Rubio.<\/p>\n

Mark Rutte, on CNN, described<\/a> his meeting with Donald Trump, which took place when it was night in Europe. The former Dutch prime minister spent around two hours at the White House for a face-to-face meeting in which, as previously reported, the issue of a possible US withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was also raised. \u201cLet me be absolutely clear: he is clearly disappointed by many NATO allies, and I can see his point<\/strong>\u201d because \u201cit is true that not all European nations have kept their commitments,\u201d he said.\u00a0\u201cAt the same time, I was able to emphasize that the large\u00a0majority of European countries have been helpful regarding bases, logistics, overflights, and that they lift up to the commitments,\u201d Rutte added, underlining that \u201cEurope, as a platform of power projection\u00a0for the United States, was in full play \u00a0over the past six weeks.<\/strong>\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump, on the other hand, turned to Truth Social<\/a>\u00a0for his comments after the meeting \u2013 and, above all, his attacks: “NATO wasn\u2019t there when we needed it, and it won\u2019t be there if we need it again<\/strong>. Remember Greenland: that big, poorly run, piece of ice!!!” he wrote in capital letters. Meanwhile, shortly before the meeting between the two leaders, it was spokesperson Karoline Leavitt who relayed the president\u2019s words to the press about the allies: “They have been put to the test, and they failed.”<\/p>\n

Rutte tried to defuse the White House occupant\u2019s anger: \u201cI highlighted the positive aspects,\u201d he added to CNN, \u201cbut clearly it was a very frank, very open discussion \u2013 and also a discussion between two friends.\u201d The head of the Atlantic Alliance sidestepped the issue and did not respond directly to the possibility of the US leaving NATO or of Washington providing less support to the Alliance than Trump\u2019s predecessors did. “Clearly he is bitter, but at the same time he listened very carefully to my arguments<\/strong> about what is happening, and I also reminded him that it was his leadership that made it possible to reach the 5 percent commitment” of GDP for defence spending agreed at the “Hague summit: this is a transformative change for NATO and it is a transformative legacy he leaves behind.<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

Finally, Rutte pointed out that \u201cthe allies stand with Trump on the objective of reducing Iran\u2019s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities.\u201d This is such a \u201ccrucial\u201d point for Europeans, too, that it leads Rutte to believe that the view that this war is illegal does \u201cnot\u201d prevail among the countries of the Old Continent. Of course, “I know” that Europeans would have preferred to act through diplomacy, “but we run the risk that this could lead to a situation similar to that of North Korea<\/strong>, where talks drag on for so long that, at a certain point, it is too late for a solution, because by then they would have got their hands on nuclear capabilities.” And \u201cthis is essentially a major risk for Europe\u201d and \u201cit is an existential risk for Israel and the Middle East.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rutte has no doubts and fully endorses the US approach: “The whole world is safer thanks to this president\u2019s ability to undermine those<\/strong>” Iranian nuclear capabilities. “This is recognized by many in Europe who know that continuing to talk to achieve this result would potentially have taken us past the point at which it can still be addressed.” Therefore, the former Dutch prime minister at the helm of the Atlantic Alliance does not comment on Trump\u2019s threats to destroy the entire Iranian civilisation and concludes: \u201cI do not comment on everything; what I can say is that I support the president, and I know that a large proportion of Europeans do the same, with regard to removing Iran\u2019s ability to export chaos to the region, to Europe and to the whole world.\u201d For Rutte, the world is \u201cabsolutely\u201d safer now than it was before the war began. Even though \u201cwe are not naive and we see the links\u201d between Iran and China and other actors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The NATO Secretary-General, following his meeting with the US President, said: “Europe, as a platform for the power projection for the United States was in full play over the the past six weeks” and “the whole world is safer”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7874,"featured_media":449829,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":{"format":"standard","override":[{"template":"1","parallax":"1","fullscreen":"1","layout":"right-sidebar","sidebar":"default-sidebar","second_sidebar":"default-sidebar","sticky_sidebar":"1","share_position":"top","share_float_style":"share-monocrhome","show_featured":"1","show_post_meta":"1","show_post_author":"1","show_post_author_image":"1","show_post_date":"1","post_date_format":"default","post_date_format_custom":"Y\/m\/d","show_post_category":"1","show_post_reading_time":"0","post_reading_time_wpm":"300","post_calculate_word_method":"str_word_count","show_zoom_button":"0","zoom_button_out_step":"2","zoom_button_in_step":"3","show_post_tag":"1","show_prev_next_post":"1","show_popup_post":"1","show_comment_section":"1","number_popup_post":"1","show_author_box":"0","show_post_related":"1","show_inline_post_related":"0"}],"image_override":[{"single_post_thumbnail_size":"crop-500","single_post_gallery_size":"crop-500"}],"trending_post_position":"meta","trending_post_label":"Trending","sponsored_post_label":"Sponsored by","disable_ad":"0","subtitle":""},"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_override_counter":{"view_counter_number":"0","share_counter_number":"0","like_counter_number":"0","dislike_counter_number":"0"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[30809],"tags":[33719,33720,27569,31521,33669,29164,26104],"class_list":["post-449848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-defence-security","tag-alleati","tag-delusione","tag-iran-in-2","tag-nato-en-10","tag-rutte","tag-trump-en","tag-usa-en-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=449848"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":449865,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449848\/revisions\/449865"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eunews.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}