In a six-minute telephone interview with Italian daily Corriere della Sera, President Donald Trump launched the most direct attack of his presidency against one of his closest international allies. The target was Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni — until now the European leader he praised most loudly and treated as a personal political partner.

“She doesn’t want to help us in the war,” Trump told the paper. “I’m shocked by her. I thought she had courage, but I was wrong.” He went further: “She simply says that Italy doesn’t want to get involved. Even though Italy gets its oil from there, even though America is very important to Italy, she doesn’t think Italy should be involved. She thinks America should do the work for her.”

Trump added — in a direct response to Meloni’s description of his attacks on Pope Leo XIV as “unacceptable” — “It’s you who’s unacceptable, because you don’t care if Iran has a nuclear weapon and would blow up Italy in two minutes if you had the chance.”

Trump said he hadn’t spoken to Meloni “for a long time,” precisely because “she doesn’t want to help us” — a near-total reversal from just one month earlier, when he had called her “a friend and a great leader who always tries to help” in another Corriere interview. — Unione Sarda / Corriere della Sera, April 14, 2026.

Meloni’s break with Trump over the Iran war has been building for weeks. In March, she told the Italian parliament directly: “Italy isn’t taking part and won’t take part” in the war in Iran, describing the expanding conflict as part of a wider “crisis of international law.” She specifically condemned a U.S. airstrike on a school in Minab, southern Iran, that killed dozens of civilians including children — calling it “outside the perimeter of international law.”

On the Pope question, Meloni refused to walk back her condemnation of Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo XIV. “What I said is what I think. The statements about the Pontiff are unacceptable,” she told reporters. “I wouldn’t feel comfortable in a society where religious leaders do what political leaders say. Not in this part of the world.”

Italy has also taken concrete operational steps that reflect her stated position. Italy’s state broadcaster RAI reported that Italy denied a U.S. request for military aircraft to land at a base in Sicily — a direct refusal of an active American military operational request, confirmed by an Italian defence ministry spokesperson to CNN. The aircraft were reportedly already in flight when the request was made. Checks established they were not routine logistical flights and were therefore not covered by Italy’s treaty with the United States.

Italy’s position is the most politically striking — because Meloni was supposed to be Trump’s European ally. But she is not isolated in her refusal. Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has been the most aggressive in his opposition, authorising neither Spanish bases nor airspace for any activity connected to the Iran war, with Spain’s defence minister calling the U.S.-Israeli campaign “profoundly illegal and profoundly unjust.” France’s Macron has described the strikes as outside the framework of international law. The Netherlands Prime Minister Rob Jetten has joined the same chorus.

CNN reported that along with the UK, France and Germany, Italy has joined efforts to provide air defence assistance to Gulf allies — but has drawn a firm line at any offensive involvement. “One key issue for European countries is the issue of legality,” Kamil Zwolski of RUSI told CNN. “What Europeans mean when they say that this war has no legal basis is that the United Nations has not approved it. At the minimum, what they also mean is that this war was not agreed by NATO allies. They were not consulted.”

For Meloni specifically, the political calculation is acute. Polls show roughly 70% of Italians oppose the Iran war. The proportion of Italians who view Trump positively has fallen from 35% to 19% since the conflict began. She faces key elections next year. A young electorate that already voted against her by 61% in the judicial reform referendum is increasingly mobilising around opposition to the war. “Meloni’s relationship with Trump has always been based more on politics than on policies,” Riccardo Alcaro of Rome’s Institute of International Affairs told CNN — and the war has exposed exactly where those two things diverge.

Sources

• Unione Sarda / Corriere della Sera — Trump: “I’m Shocked by Meloni” (April 14, 2026)
• Bloomberg — Trump Slams Meloni, Deepening Fallout From His Pope Attack (April 14, 2026)
• Bloomberg — Meloni Calls Trump’s Remarks on Pope Leo XIV Unacceptable (April 13, 2026)
• Bloomberg — Meloni Says Italy Will Not Take Part in US-Israeli Strikes on Iran (March 11, 2026)
• Al Jazeera — Meloni’s Trump Trouble: Why Italian PM Is Distancing Herself from US Leader (April 8, 2026)
• CNN — Trump Lashes Out at Europe as Growing Number of Allies Reject US Calls for Help (March 31, 2026)
• Brussels Signal — Iran War Reveals Italy PM Meloni Now Sidelined by Trump (March 2026)