ROME, March 13. /TASS/. NATO is not participating in military operations in the Middle East, chairman of the Alliance Military Committee, Italian Admiral Giuseppe Cavo Dragone stated.
He chose not to speculate on how long the conflict might last. "We will see how the US and Israel evaluate the results achieved on the battlefield. NATO is not participating in military operations, and we do not have the same depth of analysis of the specific situation as they do," he said in an interview with the La Repubblica newspaper. According to the NATO Military Committee chair, ensuring security in the Strait of Hormuz remains an extremely complex task, although feasible.
Earlier, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte stated that the North Atlantic Alliance had "absolutely no plans" to participate in the US-Israeli military operation against Iran.
The United States and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were struck. The White House justified the attack by citing alleged missile and nuclear threats from Iran. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced a retaliatory operation, targeting sites in Israel. US military bases in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE were also hit. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some other key Iranian leaders were killed in the joint US-Israeli attack.