NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said Thursday that the shooting down of a ballistic missile headed toward Turkey does not currently justify invoking the alliance’s Article 5 collective defense clause, according to Reuters.
“Nobody’s talking about Article 5,” Rutte told Reuters in an exclusive interview.
“The most important thing is that our adversaries have seen yesterday that NATO is so strong and so vigilant, and even more vigilant, if possible, since Saturday.”
Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty states that an armed attack against one NATO member shall be considered an attack against all members and triggers an obligation for each member to come to its assistance.
Turkey, a NATO member since 1952, said earlier Wednesday that NATO air defense systems had shot down a missile launched from Iran that was heading toward Turkish airspace.
“A ballistic munition launched from Iran, which was detected passing through Iraqi and Syrian airspace and heading towards Turkish airspace, was engaged in a timely manner by NATO air and missile defense assets stationed in the eastern Mediterranean and rendered inactive,” the country’s defense ministry said in a statement.
Although NATO condemned the incident on Wednesday as an “attack” on Turkey, Iran’s Armed Forces General Staff denied targeting neighboring and “friendly” Turkey in a statement on Thursday, according to Iranian media.
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also on Wednesday downplayed the likelihood that NATO’s collective defense clause would be invoked after the missile incident in Turkey.
“On the matter with Turkey, I’ll have to get back to you on exactly what the intercept looked like,” Hegseth said. “We’re aware of that particular engagement, although no sense that it would trigger anything like Article 5.”
Rutte also told Reuters that NATO supports the United States in its strikes against Iran, saying Tehran had been “close to becoming a threat to Europe as well.”
The conflict sparked Saturday with US-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has rapidly escalated, engulfing the region and drawing in global powers, while disrupting shipping and energy markets.
Iran has been attacking multiple countries in response to US and Israeli strikes against it. It has struck the UAE, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait, Iraq and Saudi Arabia since then.