It only took a few TV cameras and a microphone for President Trump to upend the careful choreography of the NATO summit. What would have been an anodyne welcome ceremony for any other world leader turned into the latest opportunity for Mr. Trump to vent his grievances — new and old — with the military alliance.
“I’m not happy with NATO,” he said while sitting beside Mark Rutte, the alliance’s secretary general.
In case that wasn’t already abundantly clear, he then set about escalating his feuds all over the map. He attacked Spain; made more menacing comments about Greenland; and repeatedly criticized Germany, Italy, Britain and France for not helping the United States in its war with Iran.
Most dramatically of all, he declared that the cease-fire with Iran was likely over.
His comments came after the United States carried out airstrikes on Tuesday against several targets in Iran, which the Pentagon said were in response to Iranian attacks on commercial ships in the Strait of Hormuz. On Wednesday, Iran’s armed forces said they had attacked U.S. military sites in Bahrain and Kuwait.
Mr. Trump unleashed on Iran, referring to the country as “scum” and its leaders as “sick people.”
He was particularly incensed by what he characterized as the Iranians’ dishonest, tricksy negotiating style. “There’s something wrong with them,” he fumed. “We said, ‘Go and do your funeral stuff,’ and instead of that, they start shooting rockets at ships.”
By “funeral stuff” he meant the nationwide funeral procession attended by millions of people for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader who was killed in the war Mr. Trump launched alongside Israel in February.
“They’re cuckoo,” he said, tapping an index finger against his cranium. Mr. Rutte sat impassively by his side, legs crossed and hands clasped over one knee.
A major motif of this year’s NATO summit has to do with European leaders deciding whether it’s politically advantageous to at last dispense with the niceties and fight back against Mr. Trump, as the Spanish and Italian leaders have started to do. The time when all European heads of state were playing nice with the mercurial American president is decidedly over.
Spain in particular came in for a drubbing from Mr. Trump on Wednesday morning.
“I don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he said. His spat with the Spaniards started brewing when they refused Mr. Trump’s demands to European nations to raise their military spending, and kicked into a higher gear after Spain denied the use of its military bases to U.S. forces attacking Iran.
“Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits,” Mr. Trump said. He didn’t specify what he meant by visits and didn’t acknowledge that the 27-nation European Union, which includes Spain, negotiates trade jointly. He went on to call the Spanish “hopeless, bad people” and reiterated several more times that the United States would no longer trade with that country of 50 million people.
Then the remarks were over, and Mr. Trump joined the other NATO leaders for a “family photo” before a working session and a news conference. The day had only just begun.
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