By Robbie Gramer, Daniel Michaels, Michael R. Gordon and Bojan Pancevski
President Trump's war with Iran has put the U.S. on a collision course with some of its closest allies over one of the most audacious foreign policy moves of his presidency.
Longstanding allies weren't informed of the battle plans until hours before the first attack was launched almost three weeks ago, and they have since been publicly criticized by the president for not providing enough military help. Some offers have been rebuffed, and friendly capitals have been left guessing over the White House's plans to end the war and soothe energy markets.
Trump has moved to allay anger among Arab countries, infuriated by Israeli and Iranian strikes on major energy facilities in the region. He claimed on Wednesday that he had no advance knowledge that Israel was going to attack Iran's largest gas field, after U.S. officials said he did. But he has spent much of the week lashing out at European allies, demanding they join a military escort mission through the Strait of Hormuz only to later say he didn't need their help.
And the week included two awkward encounters with foreign leaders in the Oval Office. On Tuesday, the Irish leader defended U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer after Trump rebuked the British leader for not providing the U.S. more support on Iran. On Thursday, a reporter asked Trump why he didn't give allies advance notice of his decision to strike Iran while Trump met with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
"We wanted surprise. Who knows better about surprise than Japan?" Trump said, turning to Takaichi. "Why didn't you tell me about Pearl Harbor?"
Oil prices have jumped more than 40% to more than $100 a barrel since the war began on Feb. 28 and Iran besieged the Strait of Hormuz. The former director of the National Counterterrorism Center, Joe Kent, resigned publicly this week in opposition to war, exacerbating a growing rift within Trump's conservative base over the merits of another war.
Trump officials say the current campaign against Iran is focused and decisive, and won't morph into another military quagmire like Iraq or Afghanistan. They also say now that the U.S. and Israel have done the world a favor by finally confronting Iran's nuclear and missile threats, allies need to step up to help them with the fallout from the war.
Polls show that among the president's supporters, a broad majority approve of the his actions on Iran.
"A regime like that refusing to abandon its nuclear ambitions is not just a regional problem, It's a direct threat to America, to freedom and to civilization," Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said of Iran on Thursday. "The world, the Middle East, our ungrateful allies in Europe, even segments of our own press should be saying one thing to President Trump: thank you."
Now Trump is demanding that allies he has repeatedly denigrated help to contain the repercussions from a war that caught them by surprise and they don't want.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies knew so little of the war plans that two of its defense ministers became stranded in Dubai with no warning when the strikes on Iran began, shutting down commercial airspace over the Middle East.
U.S. ties with Europe were already under strain after Trump spent over a year berating and imposing tariffs on allies, as well as triggering an extraordinary diplomatic crisis with NATO over his efforts to annex Greenland. Arab countries were infuriated at Iran for targeting their countries with drone and missile strikes, and they were also frustrated at the U.S. and Israel for starting a war that risks spiraling out of control.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates denied the use of their airspace for offensive operations by the U.S. against Iran before the conflict. But some Gulf Arab diplomats also cautioned that it was important that Iran not be allowed to come out on top in a diplomatic standoff with the U.S.
Despite the tensions, foreign officials from U.S. allies in Europe, the Gulf and Asia say they are working on ways to support Washington in resolving the war -- both in a bid to stabilize the global energy market and stay aligned with the U.S.
"This is not Europe's war, but Europe's interests are directly at stake, " Kaja Kallas, the European Union's foreign policy chief said Monday.
While Trump's caustic approach to allies have caused countries to rethink their long-term ties with the U.S., they still lean heavily on the U.S. for its economic and military might in the short-term.
"Allies are still going to be reliant, resentful, as they may be, on the U.S. as their primary security guarantor," said Jonathan Panikoff, a former senior U.S. intelligence officer on the Middle East who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank.
The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.
One defense minister's visit to Washington summed up the bind European allies are in as they confront the impact of a war that they weren't consulted on but directly affects Europe.
Estonia's defense minister, Hanno Pevkur, traveled to Washington this week for meetings with senior White House and Pentagon officials. Pevkur and Italy's defense minister, Guido Crosetto, found themselves stuck in Dubai on Feb. 28, the day the U.S. and Israel launched the war against Iran and flights across the Middle East were suspended. The U.S. hadn't notified these allies in advance.
In Washington, Pevkur said he discussed Iran in his meetings, but the U.S. made no specific requests for help, though Estonia is open to providing assistance. The small Baltic NATO ally on Russia's border has three advanced minesweepers in its small navy that could prove useful in efforts to address the threat of Iranian mines in the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly one-fifth of the world's oil and gas move.
"We have to build bridges between Europe and the U.S., not to destroy these bridges," Pevkur said.
Elsewhere, the public rebukes and confusion over U.S. strategy are taking a toll on other allies, officials said.
German Chancellor Freidrich Merz, a rare European leader who boasts a close relationship with Trump, only found out about the attack on Iran hours before it unfolded -- not from Trump, but from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to people familiar with the talks. Later that day, Merz's office issued a terse statement saying Israel had notified it of the strikes shortly before they happened.
Days later -- after Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz, sending oil prices surging -- the U.S. first told European allies it wasn't in favor of opening International Energy Agency strategic oil reserves. Hours later it had changed its mind, pressuring other members to agree.
Germany, which had opposed the release, relented partly out of solidarity with countries such as Japan that were hit hard by the disruption to oil markets, one official said. Another motivation was the understanding that opening the strategic reserves was a condition for the U.S. not lifting oil sanctions on Russia over the war in Ukraine.
After the U.S. did just that on March 12, Merz, visiting a NATO exercise in Norway, could barely conceal his anger.
"On Wednesday, we had a G-7 videoconference. Six of the seven were of the clear opinion that sanctions against Russia should remain," he said. "We were surprised this morning to hear that the American government had made a different decision."
During that call, all except Trump agreed that it would be wrong to lift sanctions that had been designed to slash Russia's revenues and force it to negotiate an end to its invasion of Ukraine, according to two people familiar with the call. Instead, Trump told his peers that Iran was about to surrender anyway, the people said.
One leader that has drawn significant ire from Trump is the U.K.'s Starmer, whom he criticized for refusing to initially send an aircraft carrier to the region at the onset of the war. "Unfortunately Keir is no Winston Churchill," Trump said on Tuesday, speaking alongside his Irish counterpart at the White House.
Despite Trump's criticism, the U.K. has assisted the American air campaign against Iran by allowing the U.S. to carry out strikes with B-1 and B-52 bombers from its territory. Access to those bases is important for the American military as it enables it to carry out many more strikes than if it had to fly bombers from the U.S. The bombers have been used to attack Iran's missile program, an arrangement the British have justified as "defensive" in nature.
Meanwhile, British Typhoon and F-35 planes have conducted defense air patrols over Qatar, Bahrain, the U.A.E., Jordan and the eastern Mediterranean. The U.K.'s Space Command provided monitoring data on Iran's missile strikes to British forces in the region.
Europe has served as a power-projection platform for the Trump administration's operation in Iran in other ways as well. American refueling tankers have been seen in Romania and Bulgaria.
NATO's top military commander, Alexus Grynkewich, a U.S. Air Force general, told Congress earlier this month that European bases were crucial for U.S. military operations worldwide.
"Our forces, bases, and infrastructure take advantage of the continent's strategic geography and allow the United States to rapidly move forces, sustain operations, and provide the president with diverse military options across multiple theaters," Grynkewich said.
Write to Robbie Gramer at robbie.gramer@wsj.com, Daniel Michaels at Dan.Michaels@wsj.com, Michael R. Gordon at michael.gordon@wsj.com and Bojan Pancevski at bojan.pancevski@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
March 19, 2026 16:48 ET (20:48 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
