Italy tells Washington it is an ally, not a vassal

Italy spent the spring discovering how far Giorgia Meloni's friendship with Donald Trump would stretch before it tore. The war the United States and Israel launched on Iran was the test. Meloni told parliament that Italy was not at war and would not be, calling the campaign part of a wider collapse of international law, and she turned down a U.S. request to refuel American bombers at a base in southern Italy and to help force open the Strait of Hormuz. The break became personal when Trump said in mid-April that Meloni lacked the courage to back the war, dismissed NATO as a paper tiger, and mocked Pope Leo XIV's calls for peace. Meloni called the attack on the pope unacceptable. Tajani answered that Italy remained a loyal partner of the United States, but that loyalty had to run both ways.

A second rupture opened with Israel. After Israeli troops fired warning shots at a convoy of Italian peacekeepers in Lebanon and Israeli strikes killed hundreds of Lebanese civilians, Rome suspended the automatic renewal of a defense memorandum that had stood since the early 2000s. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani flew to Beirut to stand with President Joseph Aoun, brought a ten-million-euro aid package, and offered Italy as host for ceasefire talks between Israel and Lebanon. He kept the line to Washington open all the same, talking through Lebanon, Iran, and Venezuela with Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Meloni hedged the quarrels with the Gulf. In early April she toured Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, the first leader from a major Western bloc to visit since the war began, pledging help to repair gas plants Iran had hit and to deepen defense ties.

The thaw came at the G7 in France. Meloni met Trump again and said the relationship was back to business. She pushed her own idea for ending the war in Ukraine, a single European peace envoy drawn from a smaller country, floating Finland's president for the job, and stayed firmly inside the camp arming Kyiv even as she courted talks. At home she passed up twelve billion euros in extra defense borrowing, putting energy bills and the next election ahead of NATO's spending demands.