Noordwijk, Netherlands CNN —

When President Donald Trump traveled here Tuesday for a consequential summit of NATO leaders, he arrived toting a freshly brokered ceasefire he hoped could prove to his skeptics — including at the conference — that he is a peacemaker at heart.

The arrangement between Israel and Iran came after an intensive afternoon of diplomacy at the White House, but hours after it was set to take effect, Israel accused Iran of firing several missiles and vowed to respond “with force.” Tehran denied violating the truce.

As he was departing the White House, Trump flashed intense anger that the agreement he helped mediate appeared to be hanging in the balance.

“We basically have two countries that have been fighting so long and so hard that they don’t know what the fuck they’re doing,” a furious Trump said of Israel and Iran, each of which he accused of violating the truce he announced the night earlier.

The president indicated he did not believe the ceasefire was broken. But he said he was unhappy in particular with Israel, which he said quickly violated the truce.

“Israel, as soon as we made the deal they came out and they dropped a load of bombs, the likes of which I’ve never seen before,” he said as he departed Washington for the Netherlands. “The biggest load that we’ve seen.”

In a morning phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump was “exceptionally firm and direct … about what needed to happen to sustain the ceasefire,” a White House official said.

A few minutes after taking off for Europe, Trump wrote from Air Force One that the ceasefire was still holding, and that Israel would hold off new attacks.

“All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Nobody will be hurt.”

Trump hopes the ceasefire — if it holds — will act as vindication for the US strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which drew a mixed response from leaders here in Europe, who feared becoming embroiled in a wider war.

In the end, the deal Trump announced Monday was brokered with the help of Qatar, and appeared to leave the Europeans on the sidelines. White House officials said the diplomatic arrangement would not have been possible had Trump not ordered the bombing run over the weekend.

“Congratulations to everyone!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Monday evening as he revealed the parameters of what he called the end of the “12 Day War.”

At least in Trump’s mind, the deal could bolster his stature as a global dealmaker at a moment when his ability to strike peace agreements is being tested. As he steps back onto the world stage, the president appears eager to demonstrate his ability to bring warring parties to the table — even if he hasn’t yet been able to resolve the European conflict in the background of this week’s gathering.

This week’s Hague summit had been carefully planned over months to avoid angering Trump and paper over the significant differences that remain between Europe and the United States on how to manage the war in Ukraine.

The centerpiece is a short and focused final statement — designed to avoid any disputes over language — that will formalize a new plan to raise annual military spending targets to the figure Trump had demanded: 5% of GDP. (Trump, however, told reporters on Friday that the US shouldn’t have to meet that target.)

“They want this to be a good experience for President Trump, a warm pat on the back for the way he’s handled Israel and Iran, and a commitment to defense spending,” said Kurt Volker, the former US ambassador to NATO, on CNN. “They’re hoping that this, by being short, sweet and positive, President Trump comes away with a more positive view of NATO.”

While on his way to the summit, Trump posted to Truth Social screenshots of messages from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.

“Congratulations and thank you for your decisive action in Iran, that was truly extraordinary, and something no one else dared to do. It makes us all safer,” Rutte wrote in one of the messages, going on to tout the defense spending commitment.

“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte said in another.

The flattery continued at a leaders’ dinner hosted by the Dutch royal family at their palace, where Trump was invited to spend the night.

“Let me salute President Trump’s longstanding leadership in calling for NATO to increase defense spending,” Rutte, a former Dutch prime minister, said in an opening toast at the dinner, noting the defense alliance had added a trillion dollars in new defense spending over the past decade.

“Mr. President, dear Donald, that is thanks to you pushing us,” Rutte went on. “And tomorrow we will build on that foundation and add trillions more in defense spending.”

Trump plans to meet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on the sidelines of the summit, a US official said. Zelensky will have a seat at a pre-summit dinner on Tuesday evening, which Trump is expected to attend. But the Ukrainian leader won’t participate in the one-day summit on Wednesday, underscoring his stalled ambitions for his country to join NATO — an outcome Trump has ruled out.

Already, divisions between Trump and European leaders over Ukraine had threatened to foil attempts by NATO to signal a unified front to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Trump has appeared reluctant to apply new sanctions on Moscow, even as his peacemaking efforts have stalled, and so far hasn’t approved any new military assistance to Ukraine.

And over the weekend, European officials privately fretted Trump would decide to cancel his trip to the NATO summit altogether, afraid he’d deem it a needless exercise that would take him away from Middle East consolations in Washington, according to one Western official.

White House officials had also weighed whether to still attend amid the Middle East conflagration. But on Monday, after it appeared both Israel and Iran had agreed to a ceasefire, the president determined to go ahead, carrying with him the freshly brokered agreement after an extraordinary day of diplomacy at the White House.

The venue of the upcoming NATO summit in The Hague on June 23, 2025. Christian Hartmann/Reuters

In the past, a US president who just conducted a major military operation, followed by arranging a pause in fighting, might have relished an opportunity to consult his European counterparts in person to attempt coalition building.

But Trump’s approach appears less collaborative and more go-it-alone.

Even before he gave the go-ahead to launch strikes on three Iranian nuclear facilities, Trump openly dismissed European efforts at brokering a diplomatic resolution to the conflict.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe, they want to speak to us,” Trump told reporters Friday, hours before US stealth jets took off on a bombing run in Iran.

“Europe is not going to be able to help on this one.”

A few days beforehand, he departed early from the Group of 7 summit in Canada rather than remaining at the mountainside gathering to strategize on Iran with leaders whose own countries could have become embroiled in the widening conflict.

The president’s solitary approach has hardly come as a surprise to European leaders, who found themselves sidelined in the lead-up to the US strikes. Trump made clear over the weekend he believed only the US had any real standing to intervene, and declared afterward, “only American weapons could do what has been done.”

Trump views multilateral organizations like the G7 and NATO skeptically, believing instead that direct interactions between countries is a more fruitful approach to world affairs.

He has previously written off NATO as an attempt to wring resources from the United States to protect nations on the other side of an ocean. At a 2018 NATO summit during his first presidency, he left fellow leaders shaken when he said during a closed-door meeting he would considering doing his “own thing” if they didn’t significantly boost their defense spending.

Heading to Europe on Tuesday, Trump stopped short of offering a full-throated endorsement of the alliance’s cornerstone Article 5 pledge of collective defense.

“It depends on your definition. There are numerous definitions of Article 5,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One when asked about his commitment to the article.

Trump’s loud calls for increased investment in defense among NATO members have yielded results. More countries now meet the alliance’s threshold than they did when he first entered office in 2017. But he has continued to insist it’s not enough, particularly as the war in Ukraine rages.

Now, however, the recent tensions in the Middle East may overshadow the war playing out in Europe.

This story has been updated with additional developments.

On Wednesday, NATO leaders are expected to formally agree to a new defense spending target of 5 percent of gross domestic product — a sharp increase from the current 2 percent benchmark and something that Trump has been demanding for months.

While NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has insisted publicly that the new objective is not designed “for an audience of one,” a private, obsequious message leaked by Trump himself highlights that the gathering’s choreography is mostly designed to provide the U.S. president with a win and to keep him from abandoning the alliance.

“Donald, you have driven us to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world. You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” Rutte wrote, according to a screenshot posted by Trump on Truth Social. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.”

The NATO secretary-general also congratulated the U.S. president for his “decisive action in Iran.”

Trump also said he spoke to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Asked aboard Air Force One about the ongoing exchange of long-range missile fire between Iran and Israel, Trump revealed a recent call with the Russian leader and that he was still looking to strike a deal with the Kremlin boss on ending the war in Ukraine.

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday injected some uncertainty over whether the U.S. would abide by the mutual defence guarantees outlined in the NATO treaty as he headed to its summit — comments that could revive long-standing concern from European allies about his commitment to the military alliance.

“Depends on your definition,” Trump told reporters as he was headed to The Hague, where this year’s summit is being held. “There’s numerous definitions of Article 5. You know that, right? But I’m committed to being their friends.” Asked later aboard Air Force One to clarify, Trump said he is “committed to saving lives” and “committed to life and safety” but did not expand further.

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said he has no doubt about the U.S. commitment to NATO and its Article 5 guarantee, which says an armed attack on one member is an attack on all. But the remarks from Trump, who arrived shortly after 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, previewed what could be another volatile appearance by the Republican president at a summit celebrating an alliance he has often derided.

And it comes amid a backdrop of tumult in the Middle East, after Trump moved to strike three nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran, as well as the president’s sudden announcement that Israel and Iran had reached a “complete and total ceasefire.” The sharp U-turn in hostilities — followed hours later by Trump’s declaration that both parties violated the agreement — had already started to shape the summit, with Rutte publicly dancing around the issue even as hundreds of people showed up in The Hague on Sunday to denounce the conflict in a protest that was initially focused on defence spending.

Still, other NATO countries have become accustomed to the unpredictable when it comes to Trump, who has made no secret of his disdain for the alliance, which was created as a bulwark against threats from the former Soviet Union.

Trump’s debut on the NATO stage at the 2017 summit was perhaps most remembered by his shove of Dusko Markovic, the prime minister of Montenegro, as the U.S. president jostled toward the front of the pack of world leaders during a NATO headquarters tour.

And he began the 2018 summit by questioning the value of the decades-old military alliance and accusing its members of not contributing enough money for their defence — themes he has echoed since. That year in Brussels, Trump floated a 4% target of defence spending as a percentage of a country’s gross domestic product, a figure that seemed unthinkably high at the time.

“NATO was broke, and I said, `You’re going to have to pay,”’ Trump said Tuesday, recounting his initial encounters with the alliance. “And we did a whole thing, and now they’re paying a lot. Then I said, `You’re going to have to lift it to 4% or 5%, and 5% is better.”’

That 5% figure is “good,” Trump said, adding: “It gives them much more power.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, will also attend the NATO summit this week. She said if Trump does anything to sow division within the alliance, it would benefit Xi Jinping of China, which NATO countries have accused of enabling Russia as it invades Ukraine.

“That does not help America, does not help our national security,” Shaheen said in an interview. “What it does is hand a victory to our adversaries, and for an administration that claims to be so concerned about the threat from (China), to behave in that way is hard to understand.”

Trump heavily telegraphed his attitude toward global alliances during his presidential campaigns.

He has been suggesting since he was a candidate in 2016 that he as president would not necessarily heed the alliance’s mutual defence guarantees. And during a 2024 campaign rally, Trump recounted a conversation with another NATO leader during which Trump said he would “encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to members who weren’t meeting the alliance’s military spending targets.

In The Hague, Trump will tout the pledge to hike military spending, which requires other NATO countries to invest in their defence at an unprecedented scale. In a private message from Rutte that Trump posted on his Truth Social account Tuesday, the secretary-general praised him for driving NATO “to a really, really important moment for America and Europe, and the world.”

“You will achieve something NO American president in decades could get done,” Rutte wrote in the message, which NATO confirmed he sent. “Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win.” Rutte later told reporters that he had no issue with his message being made public “because there’s nothing in it which had to stay secret.”

Last week, the president went as far as to argue that the U.S. should not have to abide by the 5% spending pledge he wants imposed on the other NATO countries, although he appeared to soften those comments on Tuesday.

That 5% is effectively divided into two parts. The first, 3.5%, is meant to be made up of traditional military spending such as tanks, warplanes and air defence. What can comprise the remaining 1.5% is a bit fuzzier, but it can include things like roads and bridges that troops could use to travel. According to NATO, the U.S. was spending about 3.4% of its gross domestic product on defence as of 2024.

Most NATO countries — with Spain as the key holdout — are preparing to endorse the pledge, motivated not just by Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine to bolster their own defences but also perhaps to appease the United States and its tempestuous leader.

“He hasn’t said this in a while, but there are still a lot of worries in Europe that maybe the United States will pull out of NATO, maybe the United States won’t honor Article 5,” said Matthew Kroenig, vice president and senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security and a former Pentagon official. “I think there is a real fear among Europeans that we need to deliver for Trump in order to keep the United States engaged in NATO.”

Kroenig added: “Like it or not, I do think Trump’s tougher style does get more results.”

European allies have taken note of potential signs of a broader U.S. retreat. France and other NATO countries have been concerned that the Trump administration is considering reducing troop levels in Europe and shifting them over to the Indo-Pacific, which Cabinet officials have signaled is a higher priority.

Still, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Ambassador to NATO Matt Whitaker have underscored the U.S.’ commitment and have said the Trump administration is only seeking a stronger alliance.

The White House has not said which world leaders Trump will meet with at the World Forum in The Hague. Trump said he’ll “probably” see Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Trump will stay Tuesday night at Huis Ten Bosch palace, home to Dutch King Willem-Alexander. He attended a dinner there with other world leaders beforehand.

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Associated Press writer Mike Corder in The Hague, Netherlands, contributed to this report.

Seung Min Kim, The Associated Press

“There’s a conflict in Ukraine, in which Russians, as a matter of fact, have made things global,” Macron said. “Will [the war] be limited to this theater? Let’s hope so.”

Macron’s stinging rebuke of the Kremlin’s war comes as Western leaders scramble to react to the likelihood that U.S. President Donald Trump will abandon the transatlantic alliance that has underpinned the European security since 1945.

The French president confirmed his plans to travel to Washington next week, where he will try to convince Trump that caving to Putin’s demands would make him appear weak in the eyes of China and Iran.

Macron also contradicted the U.S. president’s description of Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator,” saying the Ukrainian leader had been democratically elected, and defended Zelenskyy’s decision not to hold new elections in 2024 in the middle of a war with millions having fled abroad or on active combat duty.

Macron said he had organized the live feed, which lasted more than an hour, to educate the French on the issues the country is facing and to push back on some of the “fake news” he has encountered in recent days. Among the issues he was asked about were rumors of a draft, which he shot down.

However, Macron urged viewers to realize that “we’re entering a time when each and every one of us must ask ourselves what we can do for the nation.”