Is NATO About to Become ‘More Involved’ in the Middle East?

• Is NATO About to Become ‘More Involved’ in the Middle East?
  by Samuel Stolton, https://www.aljazeera.com/
  As tensions with Iran soar, Trump calls on NATO to deploy troops and take on a greater role in the Middle East.
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  Brussels, Belgium – Five days after the United States assassinated a top Iranian military commander – a move that pushed Washington and Tehran to the brink of war – US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he would ask NATO “to become much more involved in the Middle East process”.
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  Trump, who had ordered the January 3 killing of Qassem Soleimani prompting retaliatory Iranian attacks against US targets in Iraq, later called on the 29-member alliance to send more troops to the Middle East and increase its role in “preventing conflict” in the region. The demand caught many by surprise, given Trump’s long-standing criticism of NATO, including questions over its value to the US and calls on allies to pay more for the alliance’s defence.
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  Jens Stoltenberg, NATO’s secretary-general, initially appeared to heed Trump’s request, saying the Atlantic alliance could do more in the Middle East. But he has since signalled NATO would not deploy combat troops to the region, saying the “best way is to enable local forces to fight terrorism themselves”.
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  The alliance currently has 400 personnel in Iraq, as part of a mission to train the country’s army to prevent the resurgence of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, or ISIS). But shortly after Soleimani’s killing, NATO temporarily suspended the non-combat mission’s training activities.
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  And despite Trump’s call on NATO to expand its presence in the Middle East, analysts say deep divisions between the US and some NATO allies over Washington’s strategy on Iran – from the US’s unilateral decision in 2018 to abandon a landmark deal that curbed Tehran’s nuclear programme to Soleimani’s assassination – was likely to limit the alliance’s role in the region.
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  “No NATO ally supported the US decision to take out Soleimani. Turkey may have said it openly, but all allies think it was a strategically disastrous decision. It’s also why NATO will not expand its involvement in the region to any great extent,” said Ivo Daalder, who served as Washington’s ambassador to NATO between 2009 and 2013.
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  ‘Unpredictable’
  Neither NATO nor the United Kingdom, Washington’s closest ally, were reportedly informed of the US’s operation to kill the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. In the wake of Soleimani’s death, the UK, France and Germany, called for “de-escalation”, while Turkey expressed its opposition to “foreign interventions, assassinations and sectarian conflicts in the region”.
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