The United States is considering suspending Spain from NATO, according to information from the Reuters agency. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Friday that he had "no concerns" about this, because no article in the Alliance treaty provides for the suspension or exclusion of one of the members.
Published on: 04/24/2026 - 8:07 p.m. Modified on: 04/24/2026 - 8:08 p.m.
Spain in Donald Trump's sights. Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister, reacted on Friday April 24 to information from the Reuters agency according to which the United States was considering suspending Spain from NATO. “No worries,” he declared, while Donald Trump criticized him for his opposition to the war against Iran.
No article of the founding treaty of NATO, signed in 1949, provides for the suspension or exclusion of a member of the Atlantic Alliance, at the center of numerous criticisms of Donald Trump since his return to the White House more than a year ago.
Pedro Sanchez was questioned at a summit of European Union leaders in Nicosia, Cyprus, according to Reuters reports. According to her, Washington would consider suspending Spain's participation in positions of responsibility within the Alliance: "Spain is a reliable partner within NATO and we fulfill our obligations", he defended in English. “So, don’t worry,” he brushed off.
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“We do not work on the basis of e-mails (which according to Reuters mention these reflections in Washington, Editor's note), we work on the basis of official documents and positions that the United States government formulates,” he also affirmed in Spanish.
“The position of the Spanish government is clear: absolute cooperation with our allies, but always within the framework of international legality,” he continued in Spanish.
Military bases, security spending... Numerous disagreements
Questioned about this press information, the head of the Italian government Giorgia Meloni, for her part, called on NATO to “stay united”, one of its “assets”.
Donald Trump, for his part, did not react immediately. But in an email to AFP, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson noted that "as President Trump said, despite everything the United States has done for our NATO allies, they did not support us" during the offensive against Iran.
“The War Ministry will ensure that the president has credible options at his disposal so that our allies are no longer paper tigers but on the contrary do their part,” she added, without commenting specifically on Madrid's presence in the Atlantic Alliance.
One of the rare Western heads of state critical of Israel
Since the end of February, Pedro Sanchez has opposed the war led by the United States and Israel against Iran, becoming the spearhead of the voices raised in the West against the hostilities which have engulfed the Middle East.
This firm position greatly irritated Donald Trump, who criticized Madrid for refusing to let the United States use military bases located in Andalusia to carry out air attacks, going so far as to threaten to "cease all trade" between the two countries.
For several months, Donald Trump has also criticized the Spanish government for refusing to increase its security spending to 5% of its gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035, including 3.5% for military spending alone, as agreed at the Alliance summit last year in The Hague (Netherlands). Madrid believes it can achieve the military capacity objectives set by NATO, by limiting its military spending to 2% of its GDP.
Pedro Sanchez is also one of the few high-ranking Western leaders to have described the war waged by Israel in Gaza after the Hamas offensive in October 2023 as “genocide”.
With AFP
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