The US will withdraw 5,000 troops from Nato ally Germany, as a rift over the Iran war widens between President Donald Trump and Europe.
Mr Trump had threatened a drawdown in forces earlier this week after sparring with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who said on Monday the Iranians were humiliating the US in talks to end the war.
"This decision follows a thorough review of the Department’s force posture in Europe and is in recognition of theater requirements and conditions on the ground," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement. "We expect the withdrawal to be completed over the next six to twelve months.”
US officials characterised the move as a signal of Mr Trump's discontent with the level of assistance that European allies have offered in the conflict, CBS reported.
Recent German rhetoric has been “inappropriate and unhelpful”, Reuters quoted a senior Pentagon official as saying.
A brigade combat team now in Germany will be pulled out of the country and a long-range fires battalion that the Biden administration had planned to begin deploying to Germany later this year will no longer deploy, media outlets reported.
Germany is the US military's biggest basing location in Europe, with some 35,000 active-duty military personnel, and serves as a key training hub.
It comes as Mr Trump continues to disparage Nato and European allies for not coming to Washington's aid to help keep the Strait of Hormuz open after Iran effectively closed it. The US has set up its own blockade of the crucial waterway, through which about 20 per cent of the world's oil flows.
Mr Merz has said Germans and Europeans were not consulted before the US and Israel started attacking Iran in late February, and that he had conveyed his scepticism about the conflict directly to Mr Trump afterwards.
