The military strikes that the United States launched against Iran in February 2026 were devastating for Iran. They may prove equally damaging to NATO. This week, senior European officials confirmed that Washington informed its NATO partners of Operation Epic Fury only after the strikes began, a decision that infuriated allied governments and has set off an urgent rethinking of the transatlantic security alliance’s future direction and relevance.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived in Rome this week for meetings with Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, a visit that highlighted the deteriorating state of US relations with key European allies. Italy, one of Washington’s closest European partners and a NATO member with significant strategic weight in Mediterranean affairs, has found its relationship with the United States strained by Trump’s approach to the Iran conflict, the ongoing Pope controversy, and a pattern of unilateral decision-making that leaves allies scrambling for information.
The core grievance among European NATO members is straightforward. One of the alliance’s foundational principles is collective consultation before major military action that affects shared security. The Trump administration bypassed that principle entirely. European defense ministers who spoke publicly this week described the snub in careful diplomatic language. In private, according to multiple senior diplomatic sources, the language was far harsher.
The consequences for the alliance’s structural unity are becoming concrete. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have accelerated discussions about an independent European defense capability, conversations that once existed primarily as theoretical exercises. They are now operational planning conversations. The European Union’s defense spending packages, which expanded dramatically after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, are now being redirected partly toward capabilities that would allow Europe to act independently if Washington proves an unreliable partner.
For NATO’s eastern members, particularly Poland, the Baltic states, and Romania, the situation creates a different anxiety. These nations depend most directly on American security guarantees against Russian threats. Any weakening of NATO cohesion, regardless of its cause, raises the cost of their security and the risk facing their populations. Poland has already announced it will increase defense spending to 5 percent of GDP, the highest target of any NATO member, precisely because Warsaw no longer assumes Washington’s attention will remain fixed on Europe when competing crises emerge elsewhere.
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The Iran war itself continues to generate pressure on the alliance. The Strait of Hormuz closure has devastated European economies that depend on Gulf energy imports. European nations that counseled against the February strikes are now living with energy prices and inflation driven partly by a conflict they were not consulted about. That combination of economic pain and political exclusion is a potent catalyst for long-term alliance restructuring.
The immediate question is whether Rubio’s European tour can stabilize relationships that have deteriorated sharply. Italian officials signaled cautious optimism about the Rome meetings. French and German officials were more guarded. The deeper question, debated in foreign ministries across the continent this week, is whether NATO as currently structured can survive a second Trump term without fundamental reform. The answer increasingly appears to be no.
