Secretary of State Marco Rubio left Rome late on Friday with the Italy-United States relationship in the most uncomfortable position it has occupied since Donald Trump returned to the White House in January. His meeting at Palazzo Chigi with Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni was conducted in a markedly cooler register than the Italian government had publicly anticipated, and the joint press conference that had been agreed in Washington two weeks ago was scrapped at short notice.
The most visible cause of the strain has been Mr Trump's pattern of verbal attacks on Pope Leo XIV, the first American-born occupant of St Peter's, which Ms Meloni publicly labelled "unacceptable" in an interview with Corriere della Sera on Wednesday. Mr Trump responded on Truth Social on Thursday by accusing the Italian leader of "no courage" and "letting Washington down badly", and over the past forty-eight hours has twice threatened to begin withdrawing American troops from the bases at Aviano, Camp Darby and Sigonella.
The deeper tension is over the Iran war. Italy has refused to allow combat sorties from its bases since the United States and Israel launched the campaign in late February, and Ms Meloni has used a string of telephone calls with Gulf leaders to position Rome as a back-channel mediator. The Italian leader spoke at the weekend with the Amir of Kuwait and reaffirmed Italy's "solidarity" after Iran's attack on Kuwait City on May 5, drawing a private rebuke from the State Department for what officials in Foggy Bottom regard as freelancing.
Mr Rubio went out of his way after the Palazzo Chigi meeting to praise Ms Meloni in personal terms, telling reporters at the US embassy on Via Veneto that she was "a strong leader, a serious leader, and a good friend of the United States". He cautioned, however, that Mr Trump's public criticism of the prime minister was likely to continue and that "the President speaks for himself, and that will not change". The remarks were treated in Italian media as a tacit acknowledgement that the relationship was being managed beneath, rather than at, the head-of-government level.
Defence Minister Guido Crosetto was scheduled to fly to Washington next week for a long-planned set of meetings at the Pentagon. Aides said on Saturday morning that those meetings were now under review pending a clarification from the White House on whether Mr Trump's troop-withdrawal threat was a genuine policy direction or a rhetorical one. The American Forces Italy headquarters in Vicenza employs about 5,000 service personnel and 2,500 civilians.
On the Vatican question, the Rome government continues to walk a careful line. Ms Meloni has not used Mr Trump's preferred mode of public confrontation, but a spokesman said on Saturday that the prime minister regarded any further attacks on Leo XIV as "an attack on Italy". Pope Leo, in his Saturday Regina Coeli address from St Peter's Square, made no direct reference to Mr Trump but called for "those who hold power to use words that build, not words that wound".