Middle East and North Africa

Welcome back to our second and final 2026 NATO summit edition of Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. U.S. President Donald Trump is wheels up from Ankara, but not on his shiny new Qatari-gifted airplane. Instead, he said he will be “going home by normal methods,” by which he means taking an older Air Force One plane (and not seats 29D and 29E of Turkish Airlines like your SitRep co-authors).

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Trump wraps up an erratic NATO summit and Ukraine gets a big (but vague) offer. 

Welcome back to our second and final 2026 NATO summit edition of Foreign Policy’s Situation Report. U.S. President Donald Trump is wheels up from Ankara, but not on his shiny new Qatari-gifted airplane. Instead, he said he will be “going home by normal methods,” by which he means taking an older Air Force One plane (and not seats 29D and 29E of Turkish Airlines like your SitRep co-authors).

Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: Trump wraps up an erratic NATO summit and Ukraine gets a big (but vague) offer. 

Trump’s Topsy-Turvy NATO Summit

NATO allies announced billions in new defense investments, hammered home hopeful messages of alliance unity, and stressed that Europe was making more progress in taking care of its own defense.

Then Trump came in like a wrecking ball.

Between his arrival at the NATO summit in Ankara on Tuesday afternoon and his departure on Wednesday evening, Trump resurfaced his long-standing desire to take over Greenland from Denmark, said he would cut off all trade with Spain, and threatened to pull all U.S. troops out of Europe.

Meanwhile, the U.S. also started bombing Iran again—following attacks on vessels in the Strait of Hormuz. Trump said he thinks the cease-fire with Tehran is “over,” called Iranian leaders “scum,” and threatened to hit the country “hard again tonight” as well as potentially reimpose the naval blockade. Trump said talks with Iran could continue, but he believes they’re a “waste of time.”

All of this pushed the Iran war into the spotlight at a summit that many NATO allies had hoped would focus on Ukraine and defense spending commitments.

“Trump was talking about Iran a lot,” Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna told SitRep minutes after emerging from the North Atlantic Council leaders’ meeting on Wednesday. “I think that, of course, publicly, it turned away the attention from NATO matters and Ukraine-Russia. Now everybody is talking about what........

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