South Korea Rebuffs Trump's Push for Troop Deployment to Iran

For seven decades, the architecture of South Korean security has rested on an American military presence, an arrangement that carried with it an unspoken assumption of reciprocal obligation. Now, in a moment that reaches beyond the particulars of Iran, South Korean President Lee Jae Myung has publicly declined President Trump's repeated requests for military support, asserting that Seoul will chart its own course even when the ask arrives wrapped in the language of alliance. The refusal is less a rupture than a renegotiation — a signal that shared history does not automatically produce shared