Allied Rift Over Iran War Shadows NATO Summit in Ankara

President Donald Trump arrived at the 36th NATO Heads of State Summit in Ankara on Tuesday already confronting what he called a failure of “loyalty” by European allies who restricted American military access during Operation Epic Fury — a transatlantic rift that dominated the summit’s opening hours even as Iranian forces struck three commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and U.S. Central Command launched retaliatory strikes.

The Allied Dispute

Several NATO members — including Spain, France, and Italy, according to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty — restricted U.S. access to their airspace and military bases during the air campaign against Iran and publicly criticized the Trump administration for launching strikes without prior consultation with alliance partners.

Trump, speaking to reporters on the summit sidelines, said he did not want European money — he wanted their “loyalty,” according to Fox News. NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte announced that “tens of billions in new contracts” with American defense companies were expected to be signed during the summit, Al Jazeera reported. Some analysts viewed the wave of European defense procurement commitments as an effort to ease the political damage caused by allied restraint during the Iran campaign, offering Washington economic compensation in lieu of military participation.

Turkey, the summit host, drew particular praise. Speaking alongside Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Trump called Turkey “instrumental” during the conflict and said Washington would “consider” resuming F-35 talks with Ankara, CNN reported.

Hormuz Dominates the Summit Sidelines

The unresolved question of safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz — which carries roughly 20 percent of global oil traffic — overshadowed parallel NATO-Gulf security discussions at the summit’s margins, The Arab Weekly reported. The core dispute — whether commercial shipping should use a U.S. Navy-escorted southern corridor near Oman’s coast or the northern route Iran has placed under IRGC supervision — remained unresolved as leaders gathered.

Overnight, Iran struck three commercial vessels in or near the Strait, including the Qatari LNG tanker Al-Rekayyat and the Saudi crude supertanker Wedyan. The attacks, and the U.S. Treasury’s subsequent revocation of Iran’s oil export license under the Islamabad Memorandum, are covered in detail in our report on the tanker attacks and initial sanctions response. CENTCOM subsequently launched retaliatory strikes on Iranian air defenses, radar installations, anti-ship missile batteries, and IRGC fast-attack boats along Iran’s southern coast; the operation is detailed in the report on U.S. strikes near Bandar Abbas and Qeshm.

The timing placed alliance leaders in an awkward position: Trump was defending American unilateralism to skeptical partners at the precise moment U.S. forces launched another round of strikes without NATO authorization or prior notification.

The Post-Funeral Diplomatic Window

Despite Tuesday’s exchange, the diplomatic framework formally survives. Khamenei’s multiday funeral processions are expected to conclude by July 9, and Qatar has confirmed that U.S. and Iranian delegations made “positive progress” at their Doha sessions on June 30 and July 1, agreeing to reconvene at the earliest opportunity afterward, The Times of Israel reported.

Technical-level nuclear talks are expected to resume around July 11, with Islamabad emerging as the leading candidate to host the next round, according to CBS News. Vice President JD Vance told reporters at the Doha sessions that nuclear-specific discussions were expected to begin “soon,” CNN reported.

The framework for those negotiations — the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, signed June 17 by Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian — sets a 60-day window to reach a final peace agreement covering Hormuz navigation rights, Iran’s nuclear program, and sanctions relief. Three weeks of that window have already been consumed by funeral ceremonies, the late-June Hormuz exchange, and Tuesday’s escalation, leaving roughly five weeks for the parties to bridge substantial gaps. Iran has also continued to refuse IAEA inspectors access to the nuclear sites struck during Operation Epic Fury — Fordow, Natanz, and Isfahan — an impasse examined in our earlier report on Iran’s IAEA inspection deadline.

Trump said Tuesday that the United States would win the Iran conflict “one way or the other,” according to CBS News.

Ukraine at the Summit Table

The Ankara summit simultaneously addressed the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Earlier in the summit week, Russia launched a ballistic missile strike on Kyiv — an attack that Ukrainian President Zelensky had specifically warned the NATO gathering to anticipate, as reported here. NATO leaders are expected to reaffirm collective defense commitments in the summit’s closing declaration, which a pre-summit draft described as an “ironclad commitment,” U.S. News and World Report reported.

The two simultaneous crises — Iranian tanker attacks and a Russian ballistic missile strike on a European capital within the same 24-hour window — illustrated the compounding pressures that have strained alliance cohesion through the first half of 2026, and placed high stakes on whether talks in Islamabad can restore the Memorandum’s diplomatic track before the 60-day window closes.