On April 24, 2026, Reuters reported on a leaked Pentagon memorandum prepared by Elbridge Colby, the Pentagon's top policy adviser, that lays out options for the United States to retaliate against NATO members who declined to support the Iran war. The two most striking proposals: suspending Spain from NATO, and reviewing the U.S. position on British sovereignty over the Falkland Islands. Both ideas surfaced the same day Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a Pentagon press briefing in which he called the Iran war Trump's “gift to the world” and accused allies of “free riding.”
The Spain suspension proposal is unprecedented in NATO's 76-year history. No member has ever been suspended; the alliance's founding treaty contains no formal expulsion mechanism. Spain has objected most loudly within NATO to the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran. The Falklands proposal would reverse a U.S. position that has been formally neutral but functionally pro-British since the 1982 Falklands War. The Falklands are administered by the United Kingdom since 1833; ~3,400 permanent residents have voted overwhelmingly to remain British. Argentina maintains a sovereignty claim, and Argentine President Javier Milei is a Trump ally.
Colby's note expresses frustration at allies' refusal to grant the United States access, basing, and overflight rights for the Iran war. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson confirmed the spirit of the memo: “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our NATO allies, they were not there for us. The War Department will ensure that the President has credible options to ensure that our allies are no longer a paper tiger and instead do their part.”
A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer responded to the Falklands proposal: “Falklanders have hugely voted overwhelmingly in favor of remaining a UK overseas territory. The question of the Falkland Islands and the UK's sovereignty and the islanders' right to self-determination is not in question.”
Hegseth's same-day briefing — alongside Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Dan Caine — set the political ground for both proposals. He called the Iran war “a bold and dangerous mission ... courtesy of a bold and historic president,” said the U.S. naval blockade was “going global” and “tightening by the hour,” and described Iranian forces as “a gang of pirates with a flag” and “criminals on the high seas.” He ridiculed the U.K.-France-led 51-country summit on the Strait of Hormuz held the prior week as “a silly conference in Europe last week where they got together and talked about, talking about maybe doing something eventually, when things are done.”
The Independent, in its report on the briefing, wrote that American ships had not been operating in the narrow passage because doing so would put them in range of Iranian drone or missile attacks. Iranian forces have effectively closed the strait since the war began February 28, cutting off roughly 20% of the world's oil supply.
The overall pattern: a defense secretary publicly humiliating allies, a leaked memorandum proposing to suspend a NATO member and reverse a 40-year sovereignty position to punish a treaty ally that has stood with the United States for two centuries, and a president (per separate reporting) musing about withdrawing from NATO entirely — a step that would be barred under a 2021 law authored by Secretary of State Marco Rubio during his Senate tenure.
Correction (October 2, 2026): This entry previously said Hegseth acknowledged at the briefing that U.S. ships were not operating inside the Strait of Hormuz because of the drone and missile threat, and called that an admission that the blockade did not control the waterway. That sentence was The Independent's own reporting, not Hegseth's words. The summary and key facts now attribute it to The Independent.