THIS is the extraordinary moment Donald Trump made a thinly-veiled threat to take over Spain’s jointly-controlled air bases in Andalucia and use them to bomb Iran.
The US president made the shocking comments during an extraordinary Oval Office rant where he lashed out at Spanish prime minister Pedro Sanchez and vowed to ‘cut off all trade with Spain’ over the government’s refusal to condone ongoing American military action in the Middle East.
After slamming Spain for refusing to spend five per cent of its GDP on defence, Trump said: “And now Spain actually said that we can’t use their bases, and that’s alright, we don’t want to, we can use their base if we want, we can just fly in and use it.
“Nobody’s gonna tell us not to use it, but we don’t have to, but they were unfriendly and so I told them Spain has absolutely nothing that we need, other than great people, they have great people, but they don’t have great leadership.”
The rant came after US military planes were forced to leave Andalucia over the weekend after the Spanish government blocked the use of its bases for strikes on Iran.
At least fifteen US aircraft departed Roto and Morton airbases in southern Spain after the foreign minister said that the bases could not be used for ongoing strikes in the Middle East.
Rota and Moron, located in Cadiz and Sevilla respectively, are shared with the US but fall under Spain’s sovereignty, handing Madrid a veto over any military activity conducted from the bases.
The Spanish government have refused to endorse US-Israeli strikes on Iran, which killed the Islamic regime’s long-time supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei, branding the attacks as ‘unilateral’ and ‘against international law’.
