WASHINGTON: The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops \u200bfrom NATO ally Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as a rift over the Iran war widens between President Donald Trump and Europe.<\/p>\n
Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the US in talks to end the two-month-old war and that he did not see what exit strategy Washington was pursuing.<\/p>\n
A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been \u201cinappropriate and unhelpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon said the \u200cwithdrawal was \u200cexpected to be completed over the next six to 12 months. \u200bGermany \u200cis \u2060home to some \u200b35,000 \u2060active-duty US military personnel, more than anywhere else in Europe.<\/p>\n
The official said the drawdown would bring US troop levels in Europe back to roughly pre-2022 levels, before Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine triggered a buildup by then-President Joe Biden.<\/p>\n
The official also cast the decision in terms of the Trump administration\u2019s push for Europe to become the main security provider on the continent. But it is nonetheless another potent reminder of Trump\u2019s willingness to respond to perceived disloyalty by allies.<\/p>\n
Reuters exclusively reported last week an internal Pentagon email that \u2060outlined options to punish NATO allies that Washington believes failed to support \u200cUS operations in the war with Iran, including suspending Spain \u200cfrom NATO and reviewing the US position on Britain\u2019s claim \u200bto the Falkland Islands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
WASHINGTON: The United States is withdrawing 5,000 troops \u200bfrom NATO ally Germany, the Pentagon announced on Friday, as a rift over the Iran war widens between President Donald Trump and Europe. Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":97179,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97180,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97168\/revisions\/97180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}