Trump Hits Out at NATO ‘Cowards’ as Iran Keeps Up Strikes

Israeli security personnel secure an area around a rocket partly buried in a field in the Golan Heights bordering Lebanon on March 19.Photographer: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images

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By Patrick Sykes and Kateryna Kadabashy

March 20, 2026 at 7:52 AM UTC

Updated on

March 20, 2026 at 4:35 PM UTC

US President Donald Trump again lashed out at military allies for not joining the war on Iran or helping to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, expressing frustration as the Islamic Republic kept up attacks on Gulf energy assets.

An intervention by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to open Hormuz — a chokepoint for about a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows — would be “easy for them to do, with so little risk,” Trump said in a Truth Social post on Friday. He denounced other members of the alliance as “COWARDS.”