NATO Chief is mum on reaction to any Iranian attack against U.S.

Monitoring Desk

BRUSSELS: North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg refused to speculate about whether the alliance would trigger its mutual-defense clause were Iran to strike American targets in response to the U.S. killing of a top Iranian military commander.

Any comments on the matter would “not help to de-escalate,” Stoltenberg said in response to a question at a press conference on Monday in Brussels after NATO suspended an anti-terrorist training mission in Iraq as a result of heightened security risks. “It will actually do the opposite.”

U.S. President Donald Trump ordered the killing last week of Qassem Soleimani, an Iranian general based in Iraq, in a drone strike that has fueled international political tensions. Since then, Iran has vowed to retaliate and to disregard international limits on its nuclear activities; the Iraqi parliament has voted to expel American troops; and Trump has threatened to target Iranian cultural sites and to sanction Iraq.

Ambassadors from the 29-nation NATO, which is dominated by the U.S., met on Monday in the Belgian capital to discuss the situation in the Middle East. At the gathering, the U.S. explained its “rationale” for killing Soleimani and the alliance’s members were united in condemning destabilizing Iranian activities in the region including support for terrorist groups, said Stoltenberg.

“We have recently seen an escalation by Iran,” he said.

Soleimani Killing Leaves Trump’s Mideast Strategy in Tatters

Any decision by NATO to invoke its collective-defense provision in the event of an Iranian attack against the U.S. would mark only the second such step in the alliance’s 70-year history. The first time was after the al-Qaeda terrorist attacks in the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001.

Since then, largely with Russian threats in mind, NATO has expanded its remit to include cyberspace as an “operational domain.” That means cyber is one of five areas — air, land, sea and outer space are the others — that fall within the scope of the alliance’s mutual-defense commitment.

One possibility of Iranian retribution for the killing of Soleimani is a cyber attack against the U.S.

The NATO pledge of collective defense, spelled out in Article 5 of the alliance’s treaty, establishes that an attack against one member country is considered an attack against all of them, increasing the risks for any potential aggressor.

Courtesy: (Bloomberg)