Last Wednesday, Nato Secretary General Mark Rutte told Fox News that around 500 US aircraft had taken off from American bases in Italy in support of “Operation Epic Fury”, the codename for the US-Israeli campaign against Iran. It was part of what he described as broader European support running into thousands of flights across the continent.
Rome did not take it well.
Italy’s defence ministry called Rutte’s account “fallacious” and “totally misleading”, insisting it had only ever authorised technical and logistical flights, not combat operations, and had refused any request that crossed that line.
A Nato spokesperson later clarified that Rutte had simply meant to highlight how allies, Italy included, had honoured existing bilateral basing agreements.
Those remarks have stirred a political row in Italy where Meloni’s government has repeatedly said it did not authorise the use of Italian territory for direct military action against Iran.
For Meloni, who has had a difficult few months following her recent defeat in a constitutional referendum and faces an election in the coming year, some big questions remain.
How will she reposition herself on the international political spectrum? What next for her uneasy alliance with France’s Emmanuel Macron, for so long her political “frenemy” but now increasingly important to her standing? And most of all, will she and Trump ever make up?
“This might be a tough situation to turn around,” said Gianni Riotta, author and vice chairman of the Council for the United States and Italy.
“Meloni’s ability to build a bridge now looks like a mere illusion, she couldn’t stand between Europe and the US,” he told the BBC.
“She tried to please both sides, on Ukraine, on tariffs. Then the Pope broke it: she had to back him, and Trump doesn’t accept that. Trump has had a friend-or-foe outlook since his property days in New York, you’re either with me or against me, and once that understanding broke down, he pushed harder, and Meloni played up her tough-woman image.”
In Rome’s diplomatic circles, nobody wants a full rupture.
Reports earlier this week suggested several government ministers were ready to skip the US Embassy’s Independence Day reception at Villa Taverna, brought forward this year to 2 July, in solidarity with Meloni, who is not expected to attend regardless.
That mood has since softened. Tajani has said he will go “with my head held high”, and allies of the prime minister now suggest the boycott talk has cooled into a quieter “everyone’s free to do as they please”.
But the real test will come at the Nato summit in Ankara early next month, when Trump and Meloni are due to be, for the first time since the G7, in the same room again.
