LONDON, April 1. /TASS/. US President Donald Trump has stated that he is considering pulling out of NATO over the lack of support shown by the alliance during the US operation against Iran.

"I was never swayed by NATO. I always knew they were a paper tiger, and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin knows that too, by the way," he told the British newspaper The Daily Telegraph in an interview.

Trump confirmed that he will re-evaluate whether the US should stay a member of NATO once the Iran war is over. "Oh yes, I would say [it’s] beyond reconsideration," the US president reaffirmed.

Addressing NATO’s refusal to support the US in strikes on Iran, Trump said he was surprised that the alliance didn’t automatically support Washington. "Beyond not being there, it was actually hard to believe [that NATO forces were absent]. And I didn’t do a big sale. I just said, ‘Hey’, you know, I didn’t insist too much. I just think it should be automatic," Trump stated. "We’ve been there automatically, including Ukraine. Ukraine wasn’t our problem. It was a test, and we were there for them, and we would always have been there for them. They weren’t there for us," he remarked.

Earlier, Trump repeatedly lashed out at NATO over allies’ refusal to support the US-Israeli operation against Iran. On March 31, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in an interview with Fox News that the United States will re-examine NATO’s value to Washington after the military operation against Iran ends.

The US and Israel launched a military operation against Iran on February 28. Major Iranian cities, including Tehran, were hit. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) launched retaliatory strikes against Israel and US military facilities in Bahrain, Jordan, Iraq, Qatar, Kuwait, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia.