US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday downplayed the likelihood that NATO’s collective defense clause would be invoked after Turkey said an Iranian missile heading toward its airspace had been intercepted, according to CBS News.
Speaking at the Pentagon, Hegseth said the United States was aware of what he described as an apparent Iranian attempt to target Turkey with retaliatory missile fire but did not expect the incident to trigger NATO’s Article 5.
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.
It was not clear whether the missile had targeted Turkey or was meant for another country, but NATO condemned it as an attack on Turkey.
Hegseth said there was “no sense that it would trigger anything like Article 5.”
“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.”
Since the start of joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran on Saturday and Tehran’s retaliatory attacks on US assets in Gulf countries, debate has grown in Turkey over whether Iran might also target the NATO member, where US troops are stationed at several military facilities, though many had downplayed the likelihood of such a move.