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05-05-2026
BERLIN/ WASHINGTON: The US is withdrawing 5,000 troops from Germany, the Pentagon announced, as Donald Trump also threatened Italy and Spain for not helping to reopen the strait of Hormuz.
The president’s move to reduce the number of personnel deployed in Germany came after the country’s chancellor, Friedrich Merz, said the US was being “humiliated” by Iran.
A senior Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said recent German rhetoric had been “inappropriate and unhelpful”.
“The president is rightly reacting to these counterproductive remarks,” the official said.
The Pentagon said the withdrawal was expected to be completed over the next six to 12 months.
A brigade combat team now in Germany will be pulled out and a long-range fires battalion the Biden administration had planned to begin deploying to Germany later this year will no longer deploy, the official said.
Germany is the US military’s biggest basing location in Europe, with about 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.
The withdrawal from Germany comes amid a widening rift between the US and NATO allies over the war in Iran, with the US president also threatening this week to withdraw troops from Italy and Spain.
Spain’s Prime Minister, Pedro Sanchez, has spoken out against the US-Israeli war on Iran from the start, while Rome had performed a balancing act until late March when it refused the use of an airbase in Sicily by US planes carrying weapons for the war.
Asked late on Thursday whether he would consider pulling US troops out of Italy and Spain, Trump told reporters: “Probably … look, why I shouldn’t? Italy has not been of any help to us and Spain has been horrible, absolutely horrible.”
Italy’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, said he did not understand Trump’s motives for the threat to withdraw US troops from Italy and rejected accusations that Rome had not helped the US, especially in relation to maritime security.
Crosetto alluded to Trump’s accusations that European-linked ships had crossed the Strait of Hormuz.
“As is clear to everyone, this never happened,” Crosetto told Ansa. “We have also made ourselves available for a mission to protect shipping. This was greatly appreciated by the American military.”
About 13,000 US military personnel are stationed across seven naval bases in Italy.
There was no immediate official response from Spain, which has denied the US permission to use jointly operated military bases on its territory for attacks on Iran and been the most outspoken EU critic of Trump’s war.
Last month, Trump threatened to impose a full trade embargo on Spain, where about 3,800 active-duty US military personnel were stationed at the end of 2025 at two joint-use facilities, the Rota naval station and the Moron airbase.
According to the US Defense Manpower Data Center, at the end of last year the US military had 68,000 active-duty military personnel assigned permanently in its overseas bases in Europe.
It is unclear how much support Trump would have for a significant drawdown. Since the end of the cold war, US bases in Europe have become key forward-staging sites and logistical hubs for US military operations, launching and supporting wars including in Iraq, Afghanistan and, most recently, Iran. (Int’l Monitoring Desk)
