Trump spoke with Reuters in an interview:
- Does not care about nuclear material, will watch via satellite
- Will express 'my disgust' with NATO in speech and says he is absolutely considering withdrawing
- Iran will not have a nuclear weapon, nor do they want one
- We have some more targets left. If we have to, we will do spot hits
- We're going to be out of Iran pretty quickly, won't give timeline
- We've had full regime change
So this is the communication strategy: Claim a win, say there was regime change and blame any problems on NATO. Today's speech will be part of that PR campaign.
In terms of NATO, the President can't unilaterally withdraw from NATO, it takes a two-thirds approval from the Senate and approval from the House. It's also prohibited to use any federal funds to facilitate a withdrawal.
However, in terms of the US coming to anyone's defense in NATO, the President can simply ignore any attack on a NATO member (this was always the case) and the mutual defense treaty has always required members to take "such action as it deems necessary" if an ally is attacked.
In essence, while Congress has "locked the door" to keep the US inside the building legally, the President still holds the keys to the "lights and heat."
The bigger question here is why leave at all? The President has been successful in driving spending from allies higher but this move makes me wonder if Greeland and the Panama Canal or more are back on the table (or never left).
