() President Trump arrived at the NATO summit in the Netherlands on Tuesday, but his frustration is evident.
Before boarding Air Force One on Tuesday, he aimed at both Iran and Israel after apparent ceasefire violations by both sides. Bombings continued overnight into the morning in both nations.
“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f— they are doing, you understand that?” Trump said.
Senior White House officials told that Trump had some “difficulty” on the Israeli side bringing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to the negotiating table even in the final hours. Trump also acknowledged he doesn’t want to see a regime change in Iran.
“If there was, there was,” added Trump. “I’d like to see everything calm down as quickly as possible. Regime change takes chaos. And ideally, we don’t want to see so much chaos. The Iranians are very good traders, very good business people, and they’ve got a lot of oil. They should be fine. They should be able to rebuild and do their job.”
As for what might come out of the NATO summit, defense spending increases are topping the priorities. Each member country is expected to spend 5% of its gross domestic product on defense by 2035, except for Spain, to fulfill the alliance’s plans for protection against outside attack.
Trump had been attempting to push that for some time, as did NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Spain has said it can’t increase defense spending because the target is “unreasonable.”
Slovakia added that it reserves the right to decide how to reach the target by NATO’s new 2035 deadline.
