Finally Leaving NATO May Be the Unintended American Benefit Resulting From the Iran War

It's time to rethink the nature of our relationship.

When history books are written about Operation Epic Fury, analysts will spend chapters debating whether it was wise, justified, or legally sound. But one consequence may stand above all others in terms of shaping the next century of American foreign policy: the Iran conflict may have finally given the United States the political and moral clarity to walk away from NATO.

That may not have been the intention. But sometimes the most important outcomes are the unintended ones.

The Alliance Showed Its Hand

The Iran conflict has been enormously clarifying. When the United States launched military operations against Iran — alongside Israel, without consulting European allies — the reaction from NATO partners was swift and revealing. Spain closed its airspace to U.S. bombers departing from the UK and denied American forces use of Rota Naval Station and Morón Air Base for any combat, refueling, or staging missions related to the conflict. France went further: President Emmanuel Macron blocked Israeli aircraft from using French airspace to transport U.S.-made munitions intended for the war effort.

These aren’t the actions of allies. These are the actions of neutral parties — or worse, passive adversaries.

Macron’s public statement made the sentiment unmistakable. “I am not the commentator on an operation that the Americans decided on with the Israelis alone. They can later regret not being supported in an operation they decided on by themselves. This is not our operation,” he told reporters.

Set aside for a moment whether Europe had a point about being excluded from deliberations. The cold reality is this: when American pilots were flying combat missions, Europe was blocking their flight paths and shuttering its bases. The alliance built on the promise of collective defense revealed — in real time, under real pressure — that collective defense has significant asterisks.

Washington Is Paying Attention

To his credit, Secretary of State Marco Rubio didn’t hold back when addressing our allies. He told Fox News that after the conflict concludes, the U.S. will need to “reexamine that relationship” and reassess “the value of NATO in that alliance for our country.”

That’s Diplomatese telling them they stabbed us in the back and we’re not happy about it.

President Trump has been even more direct. He has repeatedly threatened to withdraw from NATO, slammed European nations for blocking base access and providing limited help, and publicly characterized the alliance as a “one-way street.” In a Truth Social post, he told European allies to “start learning how to fight for yourself” because “the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore.”

Critics will call this bluster. But Trump and Rubio are meeting this week with NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte under a cloud that didn’t exist before Operation Epic Fury — and both sides know it.

The Case for Departure

NATO made sense in 1949. Western Europe lay in ruins, the Soviet Red Army sat on the Elbe River, and the United States had both the military power and the strategic interest to guarantee European security. In exchange, the U.S. received forward basing, diplomatic cohesion among democracies, and a buffer zone against Soviet expansion.

Seventy-seven years later, the strategic calculus has fundamentally changed. The Soviet Union is gone. Europe is wealthy. And as the Iran conflict demonstrated, when American strategic interests diverge even slightly from European preferences, the alliance fractures — with consequences measured in denied airspace and closed bases.

Meanwhile, European nations felt the brunt of the Strait of Hormuz closure — a key waterway for their natural gas supply — and expressed frustration at not being consulted before U.S. operations began. There is something almost poetic about that: Europe complains about being left out of a war it refused to support, while absorbing the economic pain of a conflict it had no say in starting. The lesson is that American strategic action in the Middle East now produces European consequences whether or not Europe cooperates — which raises the obvious question of what the alliance actually provides the United States in return for its enormous expenditure of blood, treasure, and political capital.

What America Gains by Leaving

A U.S. departure from NATO — or at minimum a radical restructuring of its commitments — would not be the catastrophe many in Washington’s foreign policy establishment predict. Europe, particularly Germany, has already begun rearming in earnest. Finnish President Alexander Stubb told Trump in a phone call that a “more European NATO” is already taking shape. If that’s true, Europe doesn’t need Washington at the center of its security architecture. It needs Washington as a partner — not a guarantor.

Departing NATO would free American strategic resources for the Indo-Pacific, where the genuine peer-level threat of this century — China — is consolidating power. Every carrier strike group committed to reassuring nervous European capitals is one less asset available in the Taiwan Strait. Every dollar spent on European deterrence is a dollar not spent on next-generation submarine technology, hypersonics, or Pacific logistics.

There is also a domestic argument. The American taxpayer has subsidized European security for generations. That subsidy has allowed European nations to build expansive welfare states, fund generous social programs, and — as we have now seen — develop foreign policies that are often hostile to American interests. That arrangement no longer serves the country that pays for it.

The Counterarguments and Why They Fall Short

Skeptics will argue that U.S. withdrawal from NATO would be a gift to Vladimir Putin. This is worth taking seriously — but not conclusively. A more self-reliant European defense posture, backed by the continent’s enormous economic resources, could field a credible conventional deterrent without American hand-holding. The question is will, not capability. The Iran conflict may have provided exactly the political shock Europe needed to stop outsourcing its security.

Others will warn that severing the alliance severs intelligence-sharing relationships built over decades. This is a legitimate concern, but not an insurmountable one. Bilateral arrangements with key partners — the UK most prominently — can preserve those relationships without the treaty obligations that have grown increasingly one-sided.

An Unintended Gift

History is full of crises that became clarifying. The Suez Crisis of 1956 clarified the end of British imperial power. The fall of Saigon clarified the limits of American military commitment to unwinnable land wars. Operation Epic Fury may clarify something similarly important: that the transatlantic alliance, as currently structured, serves European interests far more than American ones.

Trump and Rubio may not have gone into this conflict intending to blow up NATO. But if the Iran war accelerates an honest reckoning with an alliance that denied America its own bases in its own moment of need, then something genuinely valuable will have come from it — even if unintentionally.

Sometimes the most important exits happen through doors that were forced open, not planned.