Rubio Says NATO Allies’ Refusal to Grant Base Access During Iran Conflict Raises Doubts About Alliance’s Value

Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Tuesday that several NATO allies refused to let the United States use military bases on their territory during the recent conflict with Iran, prompting him to question the fundamental purpose of the alliance.

“We had a couple countries say, ‘You can’t use your base here.’ Well, that’s absurd,” Rubio said during an appearance on “Fox & Friends.” “If we can’t use our base when we have a contingency, what’s the point of having the base and, frankly, the point of the alliance?”

Rubio, speaking with co-hosts Ainsley Earhardt, Lawrence Jones and Brian Kilmeade, described himself as a longtime backer of NATO and said the ability to use bases across Europe has traditionally been one of the alliance’s most valuable benefits to Washington, giving American forces a way to project power around the world.

“I’ve been a strong supporter of NATO my entire career,” he said. “But I understand that one of the arguments I used to use was that one of the biggest benefits NATO had to the United States were these bases in Europe that allowed us to project power into different parts of the world.”

“If that’s going to be denied to us, then we’ve lost the biggest reason for us to be in NATO. That’s the point we’ve raised.”

Rubio did not name the countries that denied access during the Fox interview. But several NATO members are known to have restricted U.S. military movements during the Iran conflict. According to a Newsweek report, Italy denied landing rights to U.S. bombers at Naval Air Station Sigonella in Sicily, and Spain closed its airspace to American aircraft involved in the operation. France, separately, restricted some U.S. military flights that were carrying supplies to Israel.

Rubio said some NATO members had “done more” than others to support the U.S. during the conflict, though he again did not specify which countries fell into that category.

“I hope we’ve crossed a point where that [resistance from NATO countries] is no longer going to happen,” he said. “I think we’ve had more cooperation lately from a number of countries in NATO, so that is positive, but we’re still very disappointed.”