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By Tom O'Connor

Deputy Editor, National Security and Foreign Policy

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As the United States' war with Iran nears the one-month mark, President Donald Trump's calls for support from NATO allies have gone unheeded and even Arab partners under direct attack from the Islamic Republic have yet to intervene.

Close ally Israel is fighting fiercely alongside the U.S., with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu having joined Trump in leading the charge that opened the conflict and killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Yet the conflict marks something of an anomaly for Washington, which has traditionally pursued a strategy of building multinational coalitions when entering sustained confrontations with foes.

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Iran also counts few allies, limited to the non-state actors of its Axis of Resistance coalition in Lebanon, Iraq and—yet to enter the battle—Yemen. Great power partners, namely China and Russia, have limited their role to rhetoric condemning the U.S.-Israeli campaign.

But it's a familiar position for the Islamic Republic, which was forced into an eight-year war with Iraq just a year into its founding. Lessons from that 1980s conflict are still being applied to what it views as another fight for survival.

"Iran has learned from previous wars that it should never rely on foreign aid," Ali Bagheri Dolatabadi, professor at Yasouj University in Tehran, told Newsweek. "Therefore, it holds no expectation of receiving help from Russia, China, or other countries."

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Origins of the Axis

The U.S. was among the countries to provide military support to Iraq, then led by President Saddam Hussein, when it invaded Iran in 1980, just months after the nascent Islamic Republic released U.S. personnel and staff held at Washington's Embassy in Tehran.

Washington also clandestinely sent aid to Iran as part of an illicit deal to fund anti-communist rebels in Nicaragua, and some degree of assistance trickled into the Islamic Republic from Libya and Syria. But much of the international community, including the Soviet Union and China, predominantly backed Baghdad.

Iran has since set out to establish its own network of partners abroad rather than rely on other nations. The Axis of Resistance collectively acted for the first time in 2023 in response to the Palestinian Hamas movement's deadly attack on Israel that plunged the region into still-ongoing turmoil.

The Lebanese Hezbollah, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq and Yemen's Ansar Allah, also known as the Houthis, conducted strikes on Israel, with the Yemeni and Iraqi factions also targeting U.S. assets in the region. Since halting attacks in hopes of a lasting ceasefire in Gaza, Hezbollah and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq have reentered the fight in response to the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, while Ansar Allah has threatened to step in as well.

But both Iran and its coalition have suffered significant setbacks since the beginning of the conflict, with each member losing key leaders and military capabilities. Syria, the only other state actor in the Axis of Resistance, underwent a regime change with a rebel victory in November 2024, cutting off a geographical link between Iran and Israel and further complicating the Islamic Republic's position.

At the same time, Tehran's investments in partnerships with Beijing and Moscow have not produced any significant breakthroughs in military support or defense pacts, even as Russia utilizes licensed Shahed-style drones in its own war against Ukraine.

Once again, Iran finds itself fighting solo.

"Iran fought Iraq for eight years without foreign aid. In that war, more than fifty countries supported Iraq, yet Iran did not surrender," Dolatabadi said. "Moreover, China and Russia, through their stance on Security Council Resolution 2817, signaled to Iran that they are unwilling to stand with it in this war."

"Consequently," he added, "Iran will rely on its own plans to defend itself against foreign aggression."

America's Absent Allies

When it was America's turn to fight Iraq just a few years after the end of the Iran-Iraq War, responding to Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait that sparked the First Gulf War, Washington assembled a broad coalition of nations backing Operation Desert Storm, including NATO allies and much of the Arab world.

Following the 9/11 attacks a decade later, the U.S. also channeled international support, invoking NATO's Article 5 mutual defense clause to aid in the "War on Terror." Allies from across the globe contributed personnel to bolster the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan in 2001 and a number of nations, albeit a smaller list, aided the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in what became known as the Second Gulf War in 2003.

This pattern of coalition building dates back decades, with regional and international partners supporting past U.S. war efforts in Korea and Vietnam. Even in confronting the Islamic State militant group (ISIS), the U.S. assembled a broad coalition in support of operations in Iraq and Syria.

Trump's decision to launch a war in partnership with Netanyahu against Iran played out differently, however.

Most Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, campaigned against military action, predicting they would face Iranian attacks over hosting U.S. military bases. European allies, many of them already locked in tensions with the White House on other fronts, were largely left in the dark.

And despite Trump's declarations of victory on the battlefield and breakthroughs in claimed negotiations with Tehran, Iran continues to retaliate and impose limits on traffic through the critical energy trade chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz. The movement of thousands of troops to the Middle East indicates Trump may be planning to conduct a major operation to place U.S. troops on Iranian soil, escalating a conflict already approaching the level of a Third Gulf War, and in some ways exceeding it.

Now Trump is asking European allies to once again throw their weight behind a U.S. intervention in the Middle East. Some have stepped up, with the United Kingdom allowing the U.S. to use bases on its territory to conduct sorties and NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte urging greater solidarity among the alliance.

The response has fallen far short of U.S. expectations, however, fueling growing anger from Trump.

"NATO nations have done absolutely nothing to help with the lunatic nation, now militarily decimated, of Iran," Trump wrote in an all-caps post to Truth Social on Thursday. "The U.S.A. needs nothing from NATO, but 'never forget' this very important point in time!"

The U.S. leader doubled down during a Cabinet meeting later that same day, saying he was "very disappointed" with the alliance, which he referred to as a "paper tiger."

Rachel Rizzo, senior fellow with the Strategic Studies Program at the Observer Research Foundation, argued that the snub constituted for the Trump administration "the firsthand effects of alienating its closest European allies" on other issues, like the Russia-Ukraine war, the sovereignty of Greenland and the alliance's defense spending commitments.

"Europeans are now openly questioning why they should support the U.S. in its military adventures, especially when it has continuously threatened European sovereignty and slapped tariffs on its members over the last year," Rizzo told Newsweek. "It would be shocking, in my opinion, if NATO somehow comes together as a group, as Secretary General Rutte has suggested it might."

"Instead," she added, "I think we're seeing a real frustration building in Europe, and a general unwillingness to bend to America's will, even if it means paying consequences."

Those consequences stem not only from Trump's vows for revenge but also the global fallout of Iran's attacks on regional energy infrastructure and the Strait of Hormuz, a passageway made all the more crucial for Europe due to sanctions against Russia.

"The problem for Europe is that even though they weren't consulted, they also bear the brunt of the war's knock-on effects," Rizzo said. "This means that they are directly implicated in and affected by a war they neither initiated nor were consulted in."

EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs Kaja Kallas effectively summarized the transatlantic view last week, saying, "This is not Europe's war. We didn't start the war. We were not consulted."

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Damage Control

Even if European powers were to step in, for instance in backing an initiative to reopen the Strait of Hormuz amid domestic pressure, Rizzo said, "European support would likely be ad-hoc and not supported by NATO in the way that U.S. operations in Afghanistan were."

"Overall," she said, "that means what Europe could potentially bring to the table militarily is quite limited."

Ultimately, the potential role of NATO and GCC states may be limited to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support, with little meaningful contribution in conducting actual operations against Iran.

"The United States could use more ISR capabilities from NATO countries and the Gulf states, not necessarily kinetic," Bilal Saab, associate fellow at the Chatham House's Middle East and North Africa Program and former senior Pentagon adviser, told Newsweek. "We are at a phase in the war where fighter aircraft strike packages are reaching their limits, and the needed capabilities for the next phase America's allies either do not have or have little of."

"The main allied contribution, ironically like in Desert Storm 35 years ago, would be mainly political," Saab said.

And while there may be a reckoning of America's partnerships in both Europe and the Middle East looming on the horizon, Saab argued that the impact in the immediate region may be more pressing, particularly as Gulf states question the value of U.S. security guarantees.

"The U.S. will have a lot of explaining to do with the Gulf states. There is much repairing to do with NATO as well, but it is not as extensive," Saab said. "Washington ignored the Gulf states' immediate security interests during peacetime when it signed a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015 that didn't address Tehran's regional proxy network or missiles, and now again in war when it launched a military campaign against Iran that has brought them physical harm and economic devastation."

The same Gulf states that expressed concern over that agreement abandoned by Trump during his first term in 2018 had played a front-line role in pushing diplomatic efforts for a new nuclear deal this year. Once again, the U.S. went the other way.

Kori Schake, director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute who previously held positions at the State Department, Pentagon and National Security Council, argued that the impact of Washington's decision to act without buy-in from longstanding partners was already surfacing, especially when it comes to the Strait of Hormuz crisis.

"I think we’re seeing it now: countries that weren’t even notified—much less consulted and allowed to influence our decisions or plans—aren’t rushing to help us out of the bind we’ve created," Schake told Newsweek. "Turns out the Pottery Barn rule still applies. And we actually need the economy of scale allied and partner participation would provide for extended operations to keep the Strait of Hormuz clear."

She predicted the long-term ramifications would be even greater and potentially play into the hands of Washington's other foes.

"It will accelerate allied (and other countries') efforts to find substitutes for reliable American defense," Schake said, "by increasing their autonomy, cooperating more deeply with others, developing nuclear deterrents of their own, and even making compromises with adversaries if they fear they can’t defend their interests.

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