Trump lashes out: “Italy wasn’t there for us, we won’t be there for them!”
US president Donald Trump has sharply intensified his criticism of Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni, once one of his closest European allies, over Italy’s refusal to back the US-Israel war on Iran.
In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, Trump published a reference to a Guardian article reporting that Italy had denied US aircraft carrying weapons the use of the Sigonella air base in Sicily, along with the blunt message: “Italy wasn’t there for us, we won’t be there for them!”
Italy last month refused US bombers authorisation to land at Sigonella, and Meloni has stated that Italy will not participate in the war.
At the time, Italy’s defence minister Guido Crosetto ordered that the US aircraft would not be permitted to land at Sigonella, on the grounds that the request was not authorised, did not follow standard procedures and that the plan had been communicated mid-flight.
Series of rebukes
Trump’s post was the latest in a series of public rebukes over Italy’s refusal to support the US-Israel war on Iran and Meloni’s defence of Pope Leo XIV who was the subject of a scathing attack from the US president.
His unprecedented criticism of the pontiff was widely condemned in Italy.
Trump followed this up by telling the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera that he was “shocked” by Meloni’s conduct. “I thought she had courage, but I was wrong,” he said.
The remarks followed Meloni’s description as “unacceptable” of Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo, who has repeatedly called for an end to the Middle East conflict.
Trump accused Meloni of being indifferent to the Iranian nuclear threat, claiming that Iran “would blow up Italy in two minutes” if it acquired a nuclear weapon. He added that Meloni was “not the same person” he had known, and declared that Italy was “not the same country.”
Speaking to Fox News, Trump said that any country which had refused to help with the Iran situation no longer had the same relationship with the US, adding pointedly that Italy receives large quantities of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
Meloni has not responded directly to Trump’s personal attacks, though her remarks alongside Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky – stressing that “a divided West would be the only true gift we could give to Moscow” – were widely read as an implicit rebuke.
Italian foreign minister Antonio Tajani defended Meloni, saying the country remained a “staunch supporter of Western unity” and a “steadfast ally of the United States,” but insisted that such unity must be built on “mutual loyalty, respect, and honesty.”
The two leaders had once enjoyed a close working relationship – Meloni was the only EU leader invited to Trump’s second inauguration – but the distance between them had grown steadily over the Iran war.
When asked by the Corriere whether the two had spoken recently, Trump replied: “No, not in a long time.”
Photo credit: Joey Sussman / Shutterstock.com
