A leaked internal Pentagon email proposed punitive steps against NATO allies it judged insufficiently supportive of a US campaign against Iran, including suggesting Spain could be suspended and Washington should re-evaluate its position on the Falkland Islands, according to a report quoting a US official.
Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, dismissed the idea on Friday and said Madrid was not guided by leaked notes. “We do not work based on emails. We work with official documents and official positions taken, in this case, by the government of the United States,” Sánchez said, adding that Spain offers “absolute collaboration with the allies, but always within the framework of international legality.” He said Spain was a reliable Nato member that meets all its obligations and that he was “absolutely not worried.”
The email, circulated within the United States Department of Defense, laid out options the US could take against allies it believed had not sufficiently supported its war on Iran. It said access, basing and overflight rights were only “the absolute baseline for Nato,” and explicitly considered suspending Spain from the alliance. The note also listed reconsidering the US stance on the Falkland Islands as a possible lever.
A Nato official told a broadcaster the alliance’s founding treaty “does not foresee any provision for suspension of Nato membership, or expulsion,” undercutting the email’s premise. Nato now comprises 32 member states, and alliance officials say the treaty contains no mechanism for removing a country.
The leaked memo described suspending Spain as carrying symbolic weight with little operational consequence for the US military — a judgment that cut straight to the friction at the heart of the row: Spain hosts two US bases, Naval Station Rota and Morón Air Base, but Madrid has refused to allow US attacks on Iran to be launched from its territory.
By contrast, Britain has allowed US use of its bases for strikes on Iranian sites targeting the Strait of Hormuz, and Royal Air Force planes have taken part in missions to shoot down Iranian drones. Keir Starmer’s spokesperson said the UK’s position on the Falkland Islands was “unchanged.” “Sovereignty rests with the UK, and the islands’ right to self-determination is paramount. It’s been our consistent position and will remain the case,” the spokesperson added.
The Falkland Islands remain a live sovereignty issue. The UK and Argentina fought a brief war in 1982 over the islands. Around 650 Argentinian and 255 British service personnel died during the conflict before Argentina surrendered.
The report of the email landed against a wider backdrop of public US criticism of allies. Last month, former President Donald Trump described the alliance as a “one-way street” and said, “We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us.” Voices in Washington have pushed for tougher measures. Kingsley Wilson said, “As President Trump has said, despite everything that the United States has done for our Nato allies, they were not there for us.” The memo was accompanied in public debate by comments from others such as Pete Hegseth, who argued Europe and Asia had “benefitted from our protection for decades, but the time for free riding is over.”
German and Spanish officials moved quickly to dampen alarm. A German government spokesperson said Spain’s membership in Nato was not in question, while Sánchez repeated that Madrid would continue to cooperate with allies within international law. The US Department of Defense has not publicly endorsed the leaked suggestions; one quoted US official framed the document as part of internal deliberations rather than established policy.
Tension now sits between two simple facts: an internal US document floated coercive steps, and Nato’s treaty lacks any mechanism to expel or suspend members. That gap exposes how much influence Washington’s military posture buys and how thin the tools are for translating US frustration into alliance action without wider political consent.
What happens next is a diplomatic choice. The email may remain an internal relic of interdepartmental pressure, or it may force formal discussions between Washington and its allies about basing, operational access and shared responsibilities. The immediate practical outcome is clear: Nato’s legal structure cannot be used to eject Spain, but the episode makes explicit the strain in alliance management and the political price of refusing US operational requests.
