TEHRAN - Mark Rutte does not deserve the post of NATO secretary general. It seems NATO has gone bankrupt in selecting figures to run the 32-member military alliance in these turbulent years.

While Iran succeeded in humiliating the U.S. in its illegal February war against the Islamic Republic and some top European politicians expressed their dismay over the justification for the war, Rutte backed the attack in an interview with Politico while NATO leaders gathered for a summit in Ankara, Turkey.

Rutte is not really representing the views of most NATO members. His injudicious remarks are rattling the world.

For example, on March 24, German Frank-Walter Steinmeier called the war on Iran a "politically disastrous mistake" that breaches “international law”.  Steinmeier, a former foreign minister from the center-left Social Democratic Party, added, "Our foreign policy does not become more convincing just because we do not call a breach of international law a breach of international law."

Many believed that Trump ordered the war against Iran because of his personal hatred of President Barack Obama for striking the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, and a temptation by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

In addition to providing logistical support for Israel in its 12-day war against Iran in June 2025, the U.S. flew B-2 fighters dropping bunker-busting bombs on three important Iranian nuclear sites on the last day of the war (June 22). In the new war, started on February 28, the U.S. and Israel jointly attacked Iran, while two days before, diplomats from Iran and the U.S. had met in Geneva to draw up a plan to resolve issues surrounding Tehran’s nuclear program, and were going to meet again next week.

Emmanuel Macron, the French president, described the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear sites in June 2025 as "illegal" under international law and said they were counterproductive.  Macron also explicitly criticized the legality of the U.S. strikes on Iran in the February war. Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez was also a vocal critic of the war and persistently called for diplomacy.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said, "We urge all parties to step back and return to diplomacy." EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said on March 17 that Europe did not understand some of the United States' actions under Trump or its objectives in Iran but had become used to his unpredictability.  Kallas also said she "absolutely” backs diplomacy to bring the war to the end.” She also warned, “The problem with wars is that it's easier to start than to stop them, and it always gets out of hand."

Some other European officials, like German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who noticed that the U.S. failed to achieve its war objectives, changed their tone and called for diplomacy. Merz also said the U.S.  had no strategy for starting the war.

That the NATO secretary general is out of touch with reality is not rhetoric. It is a fact backed by reality. 

In a letter posted on X on March 18, Joe Kent resigned his post as Director of the U.S. National Counterterrorism Center in protest of the Trump administration’s decision to join Israel in the war against Iran.

Kent clearly revealed that the U.S. was drawn into the war against Iran under the influence of Israel. He said Israel’s influence on the U.S. is so great that it can provoke the U.S. to start a war against another country without any justification.

In his letter, Kent said that Iran posed "no imminent threat" to the U.S. and said the administration "started this war due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby".

In his Politico interview, Rutte also claimed that Iran is cooperating with Russia, China, and North Korea against NATO countries.

Rutte also acknowledged NATO support for the U.S. in the war on Iran, although Trump still keeps claiming that NATO countries did not help the U.S. 

The United States’ codename for the war against Iran was Operation Epic Fury.

“The U.S. probably could not have done Epic Fury without using Europe as one big platform of power projection,” Rutte said, noting that Romania closed its largest commercial airport to allow American planes to take off and land, and as many as 5,000 aircraft took off from European airfields this winter despite Trump’s continued insistence that allies didn’t help.

He added, "European nations have really been extremely helpful based on all these bilateral agreements to make Epic Fury possible.”

Once again, Rutte expressed support for the U.S. attacks on Iran on Wednesday morning, telling Trump, “I think what you did last night was absolutely necessary.”

While the naïve NATO chief backed renewed attack on Iran, Kallas warned that the renewed exchanges of fire “further complicate already fraught talks to end the war.”

Full-throated endorsement of Trump’s policies

Politico said remarks by Rutte are a full-throated endorsement of Trump’s policies that have at times rankled other alliance members, many of whom question Trump’s commitment to the alliance after his threats to annex Greenland, his attacks on fellow European leaders, etc.

Again, while the NATO secretary general doesn’t stop flattering Trump, on the second day of the NATO summit in Ankara, Trump, in the presence of NATO leaders, again made renewed claims on Greenland, causing new cracks in the military alliance.

Greenland is a semi-autonomous territory of Denmark.

"Greenland is very important for the United States, but it's not important for Denmark," Reuters quoted Trump as saying. "In fact, when Denmark was overrun by the Nazis in less than one day - Hitler beat them out in one day, took over - they asked us to take care of Greenland. In fact, we took Greenland, and then stupidly we gave it back."

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen reiterated that Greenland was not up for grabs, saying, "We are ready to defend every inch of NATO, including our own territory."

Rutte, who shows no hesitation to air views on certain serious issues like the Iran war, when asked about Trump’s remarks on Greenland, he said he is “very disappointed with NATO.”

This shows that under the Rutte leadership, NATO is poised for more trans-Atlantic divisions.