I had just put my knife and fork down, and almost didn’t notice the booming sounds coming from somewhere in front of me in the direction of the main entrance to the ballroom at the Washington Hilton.

I did a kind of audio double take.

Within moments, I thought – that is the low thudding sound that semi-automatic weapons make.

As someone who is blind I focus on the sounds, and I heard the shattering of glass.

Then I felt the head of my colleague, Daniel, who I had just been speaking to, brush past and I realised he was diving for the floor.

So I followed him.

I was on my knees, under the table cloth, almost certain that here I was, another Saturday night, another presidential event, and in the midst of yet another shooting.

I was there in Butler, Pennsylvania in July 2024 when the president came within inches of losing his life.

The moments after that were filled with screaming and running people.

This time was different as within seconds, we were under the table.

Another colleague told me how, as the shots rang out, he saw dozens of people running into the ballroom from the corridor outside.

For the five or ten minutes we stayed under the table, all of us were waiting to see if a gunman had also run into the room and was about to start shooting at the two-and-a half thousand people in attendance at this dinner.

A colleague told me how she had seen the Secret Service on the stage behind us, rushing President Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, and Vice-President JD Vance away.

Other agents stood in their helmets and bulletproof vests, with their guns trained on the crowd, looking to see if there were more threats.

Just before the dinner, I had seen Health Secretary RFK Jr in a small room by the ballroom. I asked him if he was looking forward to the event, and he told me he was hungry and wanted to get on with it. He was seated at a table not far behind me.

And about 30m behind us towards the main doors, FBI Director Kash Patel was on the floor with the rest of us – shielding his girlfriend – as a Secret Service agent ran across the ballroom to his aid.

Immediately, your mind goes to the what, the why and – in this case – especially the how. How could a gunman have got close to the president, again?

All the roads had been closed around the Hilton for hours, blocked off by law enforcement. But the security at the venue itself wasn’t particularly heavy.

The man on the door outside only took a cursory look at my ticket from what must have been six feet away.

We took the lift down to the ballroom, and an agent wanded me but wasn’t particularly interested in the bleeps set off by the contents of my inside jacket pocket. They did not ask me to turn out my belongings.

In short, the security felt like a regular White House Correspondents Dinner – one without the sitting president in attendance.

As we were held in the ballroom after the shooting, we desperately tried to get phone signal to do some broadcasting and learn more.

I tried not to think too much about the scale of what had just happened.

Nevertheless, there was that telltale pricking at the eyes when your mind begins to think about what might have been. And how many of these things you have to go through in this country before your luck runs out.

Donald Trump cancelled a planned trip by US officials to Pakistan for talks on the Iran war on Saturday, shortly after Tehran’s delegation had left Islamabad.

The US president said special envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner would be wasting “too much time”, adding that if Iran wanted to talk “all they have to do is call”.

Earlier, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragchi held talks with mediator Pakistan, saying afterwards he had shared Iran’s position on ending the war but was yet to see whether the US was “truly serious about diplomacy”.

Diplomatic efforts have stalled despite Trump’s extension of a ceasefire that had been due to expire on 22 April to allow talks to continue.

Both sides have been locked in a standoff over the Strait of Hormuz, with Iran restricting passage through the key shipping route in the wake of the US and Israel commencing strikes in February, as well as over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.

The US has since increased its naval presence in the strait – through which roughly a fifth of the world’s oil supply passes – to block Iranian oil exports.

The White House had said the Iranians “want to talk” when the trip was announced on Friday, but Iran said there were no plans for a direct meeting.

Trump said the ceasefire would hold on Saturday despite hopes of another round of face-to-face talks fading.

Asked whether the cancelled US trip meant the war would resume, he told news site Axios: “No, it doesn’t mean that. We haven’t thought about it yet.”

Announcing the trip had been called off on Saturday, Trump said there was “tremendous infighting and confusion” within Iran’s leadership and that “nobody knows who is in charge, including them”.

He wrote on his Truth Social platform: “Also, we have all the cards, they have none! If they want to talk, all they have to do is call!!!”

The White House said on Friday that US Vice-President JD Vance had been “on standby” to join the talks had they proved successful.

He had led the US delegation in the first round of talks earlier this month and his absence from the initial planned delegation perhaps signalled that a major breakthrough was not expected.

Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian previously said Tehran remained open to talks but that “breach of commitments, blockade and threats are main obstacles to genuine negotiations”.

Pakistan has mediated contact between the two sides in recent weeks, including talks between senior US and Iranian officials on 11 April that ended without agreement.

Araghchi, whose trip also includes visits to Oman and Russia, wrote in a post on X that his visit to Pakistan had been “fruitful”.

He added that he had “shared Iran’s position concerning [a] workable framework to permanently end the war on Iran”, but said he had “yet to see if US is truly serious about diplomacy”.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shebaz Sharif said that the pair had shared “a most warm, cordial exchange of views on the current regional situation”.

Araghchi is expected to return to Islamabad after visiting Oman, according to Iranian state media.

Washington’s opposition to Iran gaining nuclear weapons was cited as a reason for instigating the current conflict, with the US and Israel suspecting Tehran of seeking to develop an atomic bomb.

Tehran has always denied any such intentions, saying its nuclear programme was intended for energy generation, despite having enriched uranium up to near weapons-grade level.

Elsewhere, at least four people were killed in Israeli strikes on southern Lebanon on Saturday, according to the country’s state news agency. The Israeli military said Hezbollah had fired rockets at Israel.

Despite a ceasefire between Israel and the Iran-backed militant group, both sides have continued to exchange fire in recent weeks and have accused one another of violating the agreement.

On Saturday, a statement from the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the military had been ordered to “vigorously attack Hezbollah targets in Lebanon”.

It’s become a joke – through gritted teeth – these days in EU circles, that whenever leaders meet, as they did these last two days in Cyprus – expecting to discuss practicalities, such as the new EU budget – they get railroaded by yet another crisis.

There is the ongoing energy crisis provoked by the US-Israel war on Iran, Russia’s aggression in neighbouring Ukraine, now in its fourth year. And this Friday morning, souring relations between Europe and the United States, along with a potentially devastating defence impact, reared its Medusa-like head. Again.

“No worries,” Spain’s determined-to-appear-calm prime minister, Pedro Sanchez, said to waiting journalists as he arrived at the leaders’ summit. “We are fulfilling our obligations toward Nato.”

What did he feel compelled to say he wasn’t fretting about?

An email, originating from the US Pentagon and first reported by Reuters on Friday had leaked, suggesting measures for the US to punish allies it believed had failed to support the US-Israel campaign against Iran. The email said the US could seek to suspend Spain from Nato over its stance.

There is actually no provision in the Nato treaties to expel a member country. And any action to bar Spain from filling key civilian or military roles in Nato, also alluded to in the email as possible punitive action, would have to be taken unanimously amongst all Nato members .

Fellow EU leaders at the Cyprus summit, who are also in Nato, lept to Spain’s defence. Dutch prime minister Rob Jetten said he wanted to be “crystal clear” that Spain was and would remain a full Nato member. He said European countries were currently “doing a great deal to strengthen Nato”. That, he said, was also in America’s interest.

A high-ranking German official said “Spain is a member of Nato. And I see no reason why that should change.”

While Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni – who was once seen as so close to Donald Trump as to be viewed as a “Trump whisperer” or go-between between Europe and an increasingly irritated, or seemingly irritable, US – criticised the tensions between Washington and Madrid as “not at all positive”.

Growing public opinion in Italy as across Europe has turned against Donald Trump. Meloni feels forced to take a stance against her erstwhile best buddy, drawing his ire at Rome too.

The Italian prime minister has denied the US permission to use the Sigonella airbase in Sicily for military operations against Iran. As the head of government of a country that considers itself culturally Catholic, she also described Donald Trump’s recent derogatory remarks about the Pope as “unacceptable”. President Trump, who previously considered Meloni “one of the real leaders of the world,” lashed out and told an Italian newspaper that “She’s the one who’s unacceptable” and “no longer the same person.”

The leaked Pentagon email also suggested a possible potshot at former “special ally”, and fellow Nato member, the United Kingdom – reviewing the US position on the UK’s claim to the Falkland Islands in the south Atlantic, which are also claimed by Argentina.

Why?

Donald Trump has remained furious with British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer ever since he initially denied a request to use British military bases ahead of launching attacks on Iran in February. The UK has now allowed the US to use bases to launch strikes on Iranian sites targeting the effectively blocked Strait of Hormuz. RAF planes have also taken part in missions to shoot down Iranian drones.

But Starmer insists that greater involvement in the war and the current US blockade of Iran’s ports are not in the UK’s interest. Trump has repeatedly lashed out at him verbally as a result.

When it comes to Spain, though, Trump appears particularly incandescent.

Prime Minister Sanchez was outspoken in his opposition to the US-Israeli strikes on Iran from the get-go, describing them as illegal under international law. He immediately denied US forces permission to use joint US-Spanish military bases in Spain for operations against Iran. This led to threats (not as yet enacted upon) of trade sanctions from Trump. The Spanish prime minister had previously already grievously irritated Washington by being the only member of Nato to refuse the US president’s demand to boost defence spending by 5% of GDP.

Spain has been dismissive of the leaked Pentagon email. Prime Minister Sanchez commented that “We do not work based on emails. We work with official documents and official positions taken, in this case, by the government of the United States.”

The mail betrays a “fundamental misunderstanding” in the Trump administration about what Nato does and what Nato is, says Camille Grande, the former Nato Assistant Secretary General for Defence Investment and current Secretary General of ASD Europe (Aerospace, Security, and Defence Industries Association for Europe).

“Are Europeans sufficiently aligned with the US, according to Trump’s tastes?” That is the wrong question for Washington to be asking, according to Grande. The defence alliance is based on consensus; not run by the United States.

Grande compares Trump to a landlord seeking to expel tenants from his building if they don’t pay sufficient rent in his opinion. But Nato is not Trump’s building, he emphasises.

Even more damningly, President Emmanuel Macron of France has accused Trump of “hollowing out” Nato by repeatedly undermining the alliance in public.

Trump likes to call Nato a “paper tiger”. He’s threatened to leave the defence alliance on a number of occasions, recently posting on social media that he had always considered Nato to be a “one-way street”.

“We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us,” he has written.

These public displays of disunity are corrosive and potentially deeply damaging in defence terms for Europe.

Countries in the east of the continent feel threatened by an expansionist Russia. Its war economy is being buoyed by cash Moscow is hoovering up as a result of being able to export oil at a high price worldwide now, thanks to the energy crisis provoked by Iran’s effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz – and the US counter-blockade.

Traditionally an arch trans-Atlanticist, Prime Minister Donald Tusk of Poland openly questioned this week whether the US would actually come to its allies’ aid militarily in case of an attack, as envisaged in Article 5 of Nato’s founding treaty.

Nato reckons Russia would be ready to attack a Nato nation in three years’ time. The Dutch military intelligence service MIVD noted this week that in its assessment, after the war against Ukraine ends, Moscow would be ready to initiate a regional conflict against Nato within the year.

“The Russian objective of such a conflict would not be to defeat Nato militarily, but to politically divide Nato through limited territorial gains. If necessary, under the threat of nuclear armament,” said MIVD in its annual report.

Tiny, high defence-spending EU and Nato member Estonia, which neighbours and fears Russia, experienced a slap in the face by the US this week regarding defence capabilities. Because of its own needs in the war with Iran, the Pentagon told Estonia it would have to delay delivery of six units of a high-tech weapons system (the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) that Estonia had contracted to buy from the US government.

The US Embassy in Tallinn had called the purchase “one of the most significant capability upgrades in Estonian military history.” Estonia is now left feeling exposed. This despite Estonia, along with its neighbouring Baltic States ostensibly being in President Trump’s “good books”.

Late last year, US defence secretary Pete Hegseth seemed to suggest the Trump administration was essentially dividing up its allies into “good guys” and “bad guys”.

In his address to the Reagan National Defense Forum on 6 December, Hegseth said:

“Model allies that step up like Israel, South Korea, Poland, increasingly Germany, the Baltics and others will receive our special favour. Allies that do not, allies that still fail to do their part for collective defence will face consequences.”

“The President is obviously upset by Europeans that failed to fully support the US war in Iran. But punitive measures like removing force posture in Spain seem over-reactive in light of the fact that allies were never asked to assist the US and Trump has frequently denied that the US actually needed European support,” former US ambassador to Nato and President of Clarion Strategies Julianne Smith told me.

“Furthermore, in a moment when the transatlantic relationship is still reeling from a stated US policy to “get” Greenland (a territory belonging to Nato ally, Denmark), pursuing these types of punitive measures could very well issue another devastating blow to the relationship and cast a long, dark shadow over the upcoming Nato summit in July.”

At the EU summit in Cyprus this week, leaders were sufficiently spooked as to want to explore a once little-known clause of the EU treaty – the mutual defence article 42.7. Could it be used if Nato’s Article 5 proved to be redundant, at least as long as Trump is president, some leaders wondered?

Unfortunately for them, the head of the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, that is regarded as the guardian of the treaties, said she was flummoxed.

“The treaty is very clear about the what,” said Ursula von der Leyen, explaining that EU member countries are obliged to come to each other’s aid under article 42.7. But “The treaty is not clear about what happens when, and who does what,” she added, rather unhelpfully.

Stuck between public opinion hostile to the Trump administration, and the economic and defence capability necessities of trying to keep Washington onside as much as possible, many of Europe’s Nato (and EU) nations, led by France and the UK, are preparing along with other nations, an international maritime patrol and mine-sweeping capabilities for the Strait of Hormuz after hostilities have ended. In the hope, amongst other things, of somewhat placating Trump.

The US is not part of the maritime discussions – as France has indicated it would prefer, though the UK is reported to think otherwise.

Reacting to a comment, by the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, that the war on Iran was not Nato’s war, the Trump administration responded that it had been involved in trying to resolve the war in Ukraine (though that was not Washington’s war).

Former Nato Secretary Jens Stoltenberg warned this week in a number of media interviews, that bearing all these tensions in mind, Nato’s continued existence was not guaranteed ten years from now.

But the alliance’s survival is in the US interest, he insists. In contrast to other global powers, like China, the US has allies and therefore global military and economic structures it can (normally) depend on.

“The United States is 25% of the global economy. But together with Nato allies, we are 50% of the global economy and 50% of the world’s military might. So it makes the United States safer to have friends and allies – something that Russia and China don’t have at all,” according to Stoltenberg

The former head of Nato has pushed back on the idea that Europe has broadly abandoned the United States over Iran, arguing most allies have still provided logistical support behind the scenes.

“There are some exceptions, but most have contributed.”

Referring back to Trump’s description of Nato as a paper tiger, Stoltenberg says such alliances become far less useful once set on fire by their own critics.

Europe’s Nato members have said over and again in recent weeks that theirs is a defence alliance, not designed (or requested by Trump) to formally endorse offensive action over Iran. The US-Israel attacks are viewed in Europe as a war of choice.

The disagreement between European powers and the US is not over whether Tehran poses a threat but rather how to deal with that threat.

Governments in Europe favour diplomacy and sanctions, not unilateral military action.

Nato says there is no provision for member states to be suspended or expelled from the military alliance after a report said the US could seek to suspend Spain over its Iran war stance.

Reuters quoted a US official who said an internal Pentagon email had suggested measures for the US to punish allies it believed had failed to support its campaign.

The email also suggested reviewing the US position on the UK’s claim to the Falklands islands in the south Atlantic, which are also claimed by Argentina.

A Nato official told the BBC that the alliance’s founding treaty “does not foresee any provision for suspension of Nato membership, or expulsion”.

Spain’s leader has also dismissed the report.

Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson told the BBC that despite “everything” the US has done for its Nato allies, “they were not there for us”.

She added: “The War Department [defence department] will ensure that the president has credible options to ensure that our allies are no longer a paper tiger and instead do their part.

“We have no further comment on any internal deliberations to that effect.”

The BBC has contacted the UK government for comment.

US President Donald Trump has repeatedly criticised Nato allies for their reluctance to play a greater role after the US and Israel attacked Iran on 28 February and Iran subsequently restricted shipping through the key Strait of Hormuz route.

Spain has refused to allow the use of air bases on its territory for attacks on Iran. The US has two military bases in Spain, Naval Station Rota and Morón Air Base.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez told reporters: “We do not work based on emails. We work with official documents and official positions taken, in this case, by the government of the United States.”

Sánchez added that Spain supported “full co-operation with its allies, but always within the framework of international law.”

Meanwhile, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has insisted that greater involvement in the war or the current US blockade of Iran’s ports is not in the UK’s interest.

The UK has allowed the US to use British bases to launch strikes on Iranian sites targeting the Strait of Hormuz and RAF planes have taken part in missions to shoot down Iranian drones.

The UK, France and others have said they would be willing to keep the Strait of Hormuz – a global oil shipping route – open after a lasting ceasefire or the end of the war.

On Friday, US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth used a news conference to again take aim at European allies for not helping Washington in its war against Iran.

“We are not counting on Europe, but they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do, and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and getting a boat. This is much more their fight than ours,” Hegseth said.

“Europe and Asia have benefitted from our protection for decades, but the time for free riding is over,” he added.

Last month Trump said he had always considered the 32-member Nato defence alliance to be a “one-way street”. “We will protect them, but they will do nothing for us,” he wrote.