{"id":1775,"date":"2026-07-07T16:34:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:34:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/arabnewsmonitor.com\/2026\/07\/07\/nato-summit-opens-with-trump-threats-live-updates\/"},"modified":"2026-07-07T16:34:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T16:34:10","slug":"nato-summit-opens-with-trump-threats-live-updates","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/?p=1775","title":{"rendered":"NATO summit opens with Trump threats: LIVE UPDATES"},"content":{"rendered":"

The US president has arrived in Ankara with some strong words for the bloc\u2019s European members<\/strong><\/p>\n

US President Donald Trump has arrived in Ankara for NATO\u2019s annual summit, kicking the meeting off with a show of friendship for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and threats of US military withdrawal for the bloc\u2019s European members.<\/p>\n

Trump touched down in T\u00fcrkiye on Tuesday, at a time of heightened acrimony between Washington and the Europeans. Trump has pushed his NATO allies to hike defense spending to 5% of GDP, a figure agreed upon at last year\u2019s summit, but one increasingly difficult to meet as European economies stagnate<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US president told reporters that he is \u201cvery disappointed with NATO\u201d<\/em> for not meeting this target and backing the US-Israeli war on Iran, and suggested that he could announce further drawdowns of US forces in Europe in response.<\/p>\n

\n Read more<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

\n \"\u00a9
The dangerous logic of NATO 3.0<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Trump said he only decided to travel to the summit out of respect for Erdogan, who he hailed as \u201ca very strong leader.\u201d<\/em> Despite Erdogan\u2019s condemnation of the war on Iran and the growing tensions between T\u00fcrkiye and Israel, Trump announced that he would lift sanctions on Ankara over Erdogan\u2019s purchase of the Russian S-400 air defense system, and would consider reversing his ban on selling F-35 fighter jets to T\u00fcrkiye \u2013 a move that would likely anger Israel.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky has used the summit to ask for more weapons from his EU backers, this time anti-air systems capable of intercepting Russian ballistic missiles. One day earlier, the Russian military launched a combined missile and drone assault<\/a> on Kiev, destroying weapons factories and other military infrastructure.<\/p>\n

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte, who infamously referred to Trump as \u201cdaddy\u201d<\/em> during last year\u2019s meeting in The Hague, is using the Ankara summit as an opportunity to prove his value to Trump.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump fully expects that all allies will step up immediately and get on the path to 5% and do it with urgency,\u201d<\/em> he said on Monday, telling reporters that he plans to flatter the US president by bringing up \u201cthe Trump trillion\u201d<\/em> \u2013 his term for the trillion dollars that Canada and NATO\u2019s European members have spent cumulatively on defense since Trump\u2019s first term in office began in 2017.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US president has arrived in Ankara with some strong words for the bloc\u2019s European…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":1776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1775\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.arabnewsmonitor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}