Japanese and South Korean Leaders Cancel NATO Meeting Due to U.S.-Iran Conflict

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung have canceled their plans to attend the NATO summit in The Hague, scheduled for Tuesday, June 24, and Wednesday, June 25, 2025, following a U.S. military attack on Iran.

A spokesperson for the South Korean presidential office stated on Tuesday, June 24, 2025, as reported by Al Jazeera, that President Lee's absence is due to "a confluence of urgent domestic issues and growing instability in the Middle East."

The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced the cancellation on Monday, just three days after confirming their participation. Ishiba's office cited "various circumstances" for the last-minute change. Japan is also in the midst of solemn commemorations marking 80 years since the end of World War II.

These commemorations include the Battle of Okinawa this week, which claimed 200,000 lives, many of them civilians, and the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August.

The Japanese Prime Minister has attended every NATO summit since 2022, when Tokyo was first invited following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. However, Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya will travel to the Netherlands to attend NATO-related events and hold bilateral meetings, the ministry confirmed.

According to Fuji Television, Shigeru Ishiba canceled his visit because the planned NATO meeting with the four Indo-Pacific (IP4) countries was unlikely to materialize, and a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump was also improbable.

Japan and South Korea are two of the four non-NATO countries invited to attend the event, alongside Australia and New Zealand.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also announced last week that he would not attend the summit in person. All three leaders will send their representatives.

Earlier, as reported by The Globe and Mail, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte made a controversial statement on Monday, asserting that the U.S. attacks on Iran were "not a violation of international law." The former Dutch Prime Minister made this statement as he prepared to welcome President Donald Trump and representatives from 31 NATO member countries, an alliance designed to defend the United States.

The U.S. President said in March that he would not defend NATO allies who do not contribute sufficiently to their defense.

Rutte defended the U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear sites, which occurred without a United Nations Security Council resolution or a prior attack against the United States, after being asked twice whether the attack violated international law, similar to Russia's attack on Ukraine in 2022.

"My biggest fear would be for Iran to own and be able to use and deploy a nuclear weapon, and to be a stranglehold on Israel, on the whole region and other parts of the world," Rutte claimed.

"This is a consistent position of NATO – Iran should not have its hands on a nuclear weapon," he said. " So, and I would not agree that this is against international law what the US did."

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