It seems just yesterday I was writing up a piece regarding the G7 summit taking place in southern France. In truth, it was a few weeks ago, but now that the NATO summit has wrapped up, I can’t be the only one with deja vu; world leaders meeting amid the continuing US-led war with Iran. I think I’ve seen this film before.
Welcome to Faultline. Last week, heads of NATO member states convened in Turkey for their yearly summit. Many issues were on the table for the summit, and the one expected to take center stage was the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine, considering that the Iran war was supposed to be done, as had been announced weeks ago. However, less than 30 days into the alleged 60-day ceasefire, President Trump has announced that negotiations with Iran are over, and not because they reached an agreement.
So the dominant question remains, if the war in Iran isn’t over, is the rest of NATO expected to intervene? The short answer coming out of Ankara appears to be no — and, notably, almost no one at the summit was willing to press the question.
Some background first. NATO stands apart from the United Nations, the European Union, and the Group of 7 in that it is not only a codified alliance, but it has the clear capacity to militarily intervene. Unlike the UN, which typically relies on making resolutions that encourage (read: rely) on other countries to intervene to complete its goals, NATO can act as a unilateral entity on its own.
Article 5 of the NATO charter states “that an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members, and triggers an obligation for each member to come to its assistance.” In practice, this means that there is an automatic military obligation for every country involved in NATO.
The only example of its explicit use is the fallout of 9/11, an obvious terrorist attack against the United States that triggered military intervention from NATO in Afghanistan. However, the coalition can also offer help to non-member states informally, and has stepped in on external conflicts, such as bthe 1995 bombing campaign against Bosnian Serb forces amid genocide allegations during the Bosnian War as well as offering military aid to Ukraine amid the Russian invasion as of 2022.
In recent years, however, NATO has been a major point of contention in US politics. Most notably, President Trump has expressed his frustration with the relative contributions of other Western nations in the alliance. The United States leads in individual spending on the military and on NATO by several miles, and is responsible for most contributions during interventions.
As the conflict with Iran continues, Trump has insisted that NATO must play a role in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and has complained extensively about the lack of help so far. At the summit, US Ambassador to NATO Matthew Whitaker pushed a “NATO 3.0” framing, calling for allies to boost defense spending and reduce their dependency on the United States militarily — a message that landed squarely on the burden-sharing complaints Trump has voiced since April.
Another point of tension that world leaders have tiptoed around is President Trump’s unique relationship with Russian President Putin, who is currently carrying out the very invasion against Ukraine that NATO has mobilized against. Before Trump left the US for Turkey, he reportedly had a 90-minute phone call with Putin. Last year, he rolled out the red carpet for Putin’s arrival at an Alaska meeting. One of his campaign promises in 2024 was a decisive end to the war in Ukraine “within 24 hours,” which has now exceeded World War I’s length.
That said, Trump said the US would give Ukraine a license to manufacture Patriot air defense systems, which would help defend against Russian missile attacks. His tone was much more amicable with Ukrainian President Zelensky, who he infamously ripped into for not wearing a suit in the White House.
European leaders also each pledged a total of about 70 million euros to the Ukrainian war effort, reflecting increasing faith in Ukraine’s chance in warding off the Russian invasion. The Russian front has shown no signs of slowing, with Russian strikes killing dozens of civilians in Kyiv in the days before the summit even began.
For Americans, it might be a cause for comfort that less taxpayer money will be going abroad, if that is a concern. The Ukraine pledge notably came from European allies and Canada, not the United States. It complies with the Trump administration promises of less international intervention, as well as a lower tax deal, if seen in a vacuum.
But the elephant in the room of these discussions was the apparent lack of an Iran deal. Gas prices are going down, but as things stand, it isn’t likely that they will stay low. The military has reinstated the blockade on the Strait of Hormuz and President Trump has said he plans to keep sanctions and strikes on the table until Iran complies.
The total estimated cost of the Iran war exceeds $100 billion, and broader economic impacts conservatively sit at $150 billion. Though tax bills themselves, this past April and surely next year, are not changing significantly (rather, several Trump-sponsored tax cuts are taking effect) the war’s impact on spending cannot be understated. Practically every measure of spending has increased through the war, imports are more expensive and gas prices will prove to be volatile. Economists estimate that Pentagon spending costs the average American household roughly $1,000 in lost economic benefit, effectively offsetting the administration’s recent tax relief efforts.
But, at last week’s NATO summit, international leaders largely did not voice concerns to the president. Rather, the NATO chief Mark Rutte has described President Trump’s attacks on Iran ‘absolutely necessary,’ even now that Iran’s nuclear capabilities have allegedly been destroyed. Although Article 5 has not been invoked, and countries are not providing outright military support, many member nations are certainly assisting the American war effort through logistical support, airspace, and military bases for U.S. operations.
The one country which has refused to volunteer their airspace, Spain, has been threatened with sanctions and heightened tariffs by President Trump. Not every leader stayed silent — Poland’s Karol Nawrocki and Norway’s Jonas Gahr Støre both pushed back publicly on Trump’s threats to pull US troops from Europe, calling the bluff rather than falling in line. But on Iran specifically, that kind of pushback was notably absent.
What we’re seeing is a reflection of the G7 summit last month, as well as international politics as a whole. No one with the capacity to disagree with Trump in any meaningful way is doing so on the Iran question, and most people have chosen to not disagree at all. In some cases, it seems this strategy has paid off in order to encourage Trump’s continued investment abroad, but will likely circle back to harm Americans.
NATO Has an Article 5. It Doesn't Have an Iran Policy was first published by Faultline and was republished with permission.
Isabel Papp is a summer fellow with The Fulcrum. She is a student at Northwestern University, double‑majoring in Journalism and Political Science. A bilingual journalist, she is a proactive, equity‑centered storyteller committed to elevating underrepresented voices.
Ben Droz
Ben Droz
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Pinnacle Bank Expo Center on the Nebraska State Fairgrounds on October 05, 2026 in Grand Island, Nebraska.
The President Invited Iran to Bomb My Home
I was driving home to San Diego from Los Angeles on Monday night when I heard that the President of the United States had offered both cities up to Iran as bomb targets. At a rally in Nebraska, defending his war, Trump told the crowd, “let [Iran] take out Los Angeles, let ‘em take out San Diego.” It was, he said, “a very small price to pay.”
I was coming from a Bernie Sanders rally for Proposition 40, the one-time tax on California billionaires that would send 90% of its revenue to healthcare. We desperately need it to pass because, in order to give tax breaks to billionaires, Trump signed a law that will strip health coverage from 10 million Americans; this tax will make sure we can still cover Californians. Call me crazy, but I think taxing billionaires one time so we can make sure kids in California get to see a doctor is a very small price to pay. I also think that even if Trump were joking, it is indefensible to make jokes about the potential destruction of so many lives. Human life is never a small price to pay. Human life is priceless.
Plus, the reality is: here in San Diego, we’re already paying the price for Trump’s actions, and it’s not small at all. He has gutted FEMA, tried to kill climate resiliency programs, and destroyed public health standards, while his signature law is set to cut off health insurance and food support for hundreds of thousands of San Diegans. Like plenty of American cities, San Diego is already busy finding local solutions to respond to the problems this president has recklessly created.
Not to mention, at least 19 American service members have been killed in this war already. Human rights monitors have documented more than 3,600 dead in Iran by April alone. Here at home, gas is sitting just pennies below its all-time record. Taxpayers have already spent more than $45 billion on the war, while Trump’s oil and gas portfolio has grown by roughly $15.5 million this year alone. Of course anything is a “small price” to someone paying free.99 for this war, and profiting from it. Meanwhile, We the People are paying twice: first for the war, and then for the consequences of that war. But now he wants San Diego to pay a third time, flippantly offering us up to Iran.
It is worth noticing which cities he thought to name. Were San Diego and Los Angeles strategically chosen to signify something to his audience, or were they simply the first cities that came to mind as expendable places? Either way, the effect is to normalize—-and to gauge a crowd’s reaction to–the idea of massive violence in major California cities, suitable targets because of their perceived liberal lean. So what if Iran needs to bomb a little bit of America before the war can be over? Who cares, says Trump, if they target Los Angeles and San Diego?
By the way, why didn’t he offer up San Francisco, the free-love hippie-town MAGA loves to hate (and also my birthplace)? Could it be because that’s where the tech titans live? The same ones who joined Trump for Xi Jinping’s state dinner, a guest list worth a combined $2.4 trillion?
San Diego may have fewer billionaires, but it is home to more than 115,000 active-duty service members and 230,000 veterans. One in six active-duty sailors–in the entire Navy–is stationed here. So is one in four Marines. You cannot throw a rock in this county without hitting a military family: brats and spouses and veterans are among us. I got out of the Navy last year after ten years, and eight of those were here in San Diego. When Trump says “let ‘em take out San Diego,” he’s talking about the backbone of the United States military. He’s also talking about the people fighting his war.
San Diego has not been watching this war from the sidelines. Today, the USS Abraham Lincoln returns to North Island after an almost yearlong deployment to the Middle East that featured food shortages, broken toilets, and mold in the showers after 286 days at sea without a single port call. Eight sailors in the Lincoln’s strike group attempted suicide, but in August, when a reporter asked whether the deployment had gone on too long, Trump said “not nearly long enough.” Now he has told a crowd in Nebraska that we should let Iran take out the city those sailors call home. These are sociopathic sentiments.
Last week at Quantico, Pete Hegseth closed his address to the force by telling them, “President Trump has your back and so do I.” To the contrary, President Trump has put one of the biggest military towns in the country forward as a target for our adversaries. With friends like these, the “domestic” in “against all enemies, foreign and domestic” starts to sound a lot less hypothetical.
San Diego is home to Naval Air Station North Island, Naval Base San Diego, Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, the Point Loma submarine base, Camp Pendleton, and Miramar (and I have been permanently stationed at or trained at all of them). If Iran bombed San Diego and Los Angeles, aside from the devastating loss of life, it would cripple an immense share of our national security readiness.
And for what, exactly? Trump says the war is “essentially almost over with.” This is the same man who claimed in June 2025 that Iran’s nuclear program had been “obliterated,” then launched a war over it anyway on February 28. More than seven months later, he wants us to believe two things at once: that we’ve basically won, and that we might need to sacrifice an American city or two to finish winning. If the war is almost over, why does anybody need to take out San Diego?
I wonder if Trump’s endorsed candidate for California’s 48th District here in San Diego County will respond to these remarks. He recently said “no pain, no gain,” when referring to the gas prices San Diegans are paying. Jim Desmond, would you apply that same mindset if we were bombed? Or do you have the moral courage to stand up for the people you’re running to represent?
Last November, six Democratic members of Congress, all veterans, including Senator Mark Kelly, recorded a video reminding troops of their duty to disobey unlawful orders, restating the law that says so. Trump called it “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH,” and then his Justice Department went looking for an indictment, which a grand jury refused. The president treated reading the law out loud to the troops as a capital offense, but then he himself invited a foreign enemy to destroy two American cities, possibly as a punchline. Is anyone calling the latter sedition? Who is demanding accountability?
Calling our lives a small price to pay affirms a moral bankruptcy, as well as an obvious dereliction of duty to the office he holds. While we can’t impeach him or invoke the 25th Amendment ourselves, we must stop being so quiet about what we’re paying already. We can make our voices heard by calling our representatives, writing op-eds, knocking doors, phone banking, and voting in defiance of the man who threatens the safety of our city. Ballots are already arriving in mailboxes. Vote, and vote yes on 40 (and no on 41 and 42).
Trump has been harming our cities for a while, but now he is inviting our military adversaries to join him in the harm. If we have any self-respect as Americans, we must not tolerate our leaders disregarding the dignity of lives in this way. We must fight for our home.
Julie Roland was a Naval Officer for ten years, deploying to both the South China Sea and the Persian Gulf as a helicopter pilot before separating in June 2025 as a Lieutenant Commander. She has a law degree from the University of San Diego, a Master of Laws from Columbia University, and is a member of the Truman National Security Project.