ATHENS, Greece — Ties between Greece and the United States are at an all-time high, both envoys to each other’s nations say.
Kimberly Guilfoyle, the U.S. Ambassador to Greece, told Breitbart News at an event in Athens in mid-February that Greece has “always exceeded even our highest expectations” as an ally — warm comments from President Donald Trump’s administration at a time when the president and his team have been critical of many other NATO countries.
“An ally is an ally, but they’re not all built and shaped the same way,” Guilfoyle said on stage at the Nisyros Dialogues event in Athens at the Grande Bretagne hotel hosted by Greek businessman Peter Mihalos in mid-February. “I make that point all the time because Greece has always exceeded even our highest expectations. Coming from the United States of America, we have bilateral relationships with so many different countries. But whether it is military cooperation, training, investment in the United States and Greece, despite even a smaller per capita GDP than other larger countries that are our allies, Greece has committed and exceeded — committed to the spending of the 5 percent of GDP on defense, and they’re way ahead of the pack. We have had meetings and summits about this — I was just in Germany — and I’m just really impressed with the multiple meetings I’ve had with Prime Minister Mitsotakis. It’s always an open door conversation all the time. We see each other probably three or four times a week, working every day with the Minister of Energy and Environment, and it’s been fantastic. They actually have a genuine interest in working with the United States and showing up and trying to let us know in very clear tangible metrics that they want to be a strategic ally, that they value the relationship, and that’s why the United States will always stand by its ally Greece, an incredible country and the birthplace of democracy.”
Similarly, Greece’s Ambassador to the United States Antonis Alexandridis said at a Greek Independence Day ceremony at the Greek Embassy to the United States in Washington in mid-March that the two countries are closer than ever.
“The struggle still goes on: It’s not fought with guns and it’s not shared with blood, but it’s fought in different fora,” Alexandridis said. “It’s fought in classrooms where we teach our language and our history, it’s fought in churches where we teach and maintain our faith, it’s fought in our barracks where our soldiers defend every inch of our country, and it’s fought in LNG ports and ports and terminals and interconnectors, it’s fought in shipyards where we repair and build ships that dominate international seas and the high seas. I have a proclamation and I hereby proclaim and I ask you all, Greek-Americans, to proclaim… that Greece is strong and we continue to be stronger by the minute. Wherever you search, the United States of America can never find a better and nobler and more steadfast ally than Greece.”
The special relationship between the two nations is likely to be a centerpiece of the conversation set to take place next week in Delphi, Greece, at the Delphi Economic Forum. As the annual gathering of thousands of influential world leaders enters its second decade, the event’s founder Symeon Tsomokos told Athens Voice — a Greek newspaper — that this year the forum “is maturing.”
“We have a very rich program,” Tsomokos said. “I think we have strong delegations coming from many countries. We have special issues for the Middle East that dominate international news. We have special issues for America, for China, for Russia. Geopolitics will cover a very large part. But on the other hand, we also have our own issues: where the Greek economy is going, energy issues, education issues.”
Among others, Breitbart News will again be front and center after attending the forum last year as well. The Delphi Economic Forum takes place in historic ancient Delphi, Greece, in the mountains a few hours from Athens. It’s to ancient Delphi where for centuries leaders and commoners alike would venture to visit the “Oracle of Delphi” to make major decisions. The center of the ancient world, where thousands of years of historical major decisions were made, the home of this forum in the new world in the 21st century is becoming a major destination on par with other global events like the Davos forum in Switzerland. And at the center of it all is Greece’s rise as a major European partner of the United States — arguably one of the most important partners given its geopolitical location and Greece’s embrace of Trump’s vision for the world. In fact, Greece willingly upped its defense spending before Trump even pushed the rest of NATO to do so — and Greece has culturally sided with Trump in many respects, like on questions about China and about migration.
“Greece is more than memories and monuments,” Alexandridis said in his Greek Independence Day event speech in Washington. “We stand in the crossroads of North Africa, the Middle East, and the Eastern Mediterranean. We are a strong pillar of stability. In the case of a troublemaker, we are proud to be an anchor. In NATO, we are one of the most steadfast allies and a NATO big spender.”
“At the European Union, we are the solution solvers not the troublemakers. In our neighborhood, we can only bring big partnerships,” Alexandridis added. “From Nicosia to Jerusalem to Cairo, we are there to provide stability and solutions. We have emerged from a dreadful economic crisis… We have reformed. We have modernized.”
Last year’s Delphi Economic Forum came in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs levied on nations worldwide. At the time, Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis was the first and only world leader to publicly defend Trump’s vision — doing so in an interview with Breitbart News in the lead-up to the forum — in which Mitsotakis, in hindsight correctly, predicted that the U.S. and the European Union would soon eventually reach a better trade agreement for both sides. Lo and behold, a few months later, Mitsotakis’s prediction was correct: Trump and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced a trade pact in July, 2025 in Scotland. Trump, in an interview with Breitbart News there at his seaside golf resort Turnberry, said that it is “a great deal for both” Europe and the United States. Both the Europeans and the United States remain committed to implementing it, officials from both sides have repeatedly confirmed to Breitbart News including as recently as this week when Valdis Dombrovskis, the European Commission’s Commissioner for Economy and Productivity and former Prime Minister of Latvia, said so in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News in Washington.
Trump, when Mitsotakis defended him last year during the Delphi Economic Forum, spoke extremely highly of the Greek Prime Minister. “First of all, I know him, he’s a good man, and I appreciate his comments,” Trump told Breitbart News outside the White House at the time, adding that he agreed with Mitsotakis that a “win-win” deal could be reached.
Ambassador Guilfoyle spoke highly of Mitsotakis when asked about this during the Nisyros Dialogues event in Athens in February.
“If you know Kyriakos Mitsotakis, he’s a very learned man, highly intelligent, and very thoughtful and deliberate in the way he processes and thinks about things,” Guilfoyle told Breitbart News. “He’s just been a pleasure because he understands it. I can have a very direct conversation with him, send him a message, pick up the phone, we talk to each other — he really does support the United States and wants to prove that — and he really does admire the president. He’s shown support in other areas as well, for the president and what we’re trying to do. That takes strength. It may not be politically palatable to everybody because there’s different parties et cetera, but when you do what President Trump does — and I believe very strongly that Prime Minister Mitsotakis does this, he’s trying to do what’s in the best interest for Greece, for the economy, for the people, to stimulate growth and to make sure that Greece is well-defended in this very tricky geopolitical region of the world.”
“That’s what a leader has to do,” Guilfoyle explained, “you have to make tough decisions and President Trump does that. Like, with tariffs, he knew there was an end game. Sometimes you have to feel a little bit of a squeeze and pain to get to the place where you need to be. He approached it from, essentially, a market of equities which is, ‘Listen, why is the United States giving more, paying more, being penalized when these other countries are taking advantage?’ Well, sometimes you have to reset the board. That’s what he’s been able to do. He’s worked so incredibly well with my amazing friend, our Secretary of the Treasury — Scott Bessent, he’s a 10, he’s absolutely amazing and he just works in tandem with the president to create these economic outcomes and metrics that the United States is recently enjoying because we had to kind of turn our country back around. Sometimes that takes time but it’s actually happened in very quick order when you think about it. The president’s been in now, what? A little over a year? I’ve been here three months, so — we like to get things done fast.”
Several visits from Cabinet-level officials have already occurred in Greece, with Secretaries Doug Burgum and Chris Wright already visiting the country and more planned on the way, per Guilfoyle — including upcoming visits from Secretary of State Marco Rubio and likely President Trump and Vice President JD Vance. “You’re going to continue to see high-level dialogue. Secretary Rubio will be coming here I hope sooner than later but as you see he is extremely busy just like the president,” Guilfoyle said.
“Take note and be encouraged,” Guilfoyle added. “I’d go so far as to say be excited about the fact that you have some of the best and brightest coming here and paying very serious attention to your country because you matter. I think that’s wonderful. I want to increase that and use my personal relationships with all the people who are high-level in government to facilitate that and show that we have something to offer here and a lot to get done.”
At the heart of strengthening U.S.-Greek ties, per Alexandridis, is energy.
“Nowhere is this transformation clearer than in the field of energy. Europe has learned that dependence on a single supplier is a strategic weakness. Greece has decided to become part of the answer,” the Greek envoy to the U.S. said at the Independence Day event. Due to ports, LNG terminals, and interconnectors, the ambassador said, “Greece is becoming a gateway for energy into southeastern and central Europe.”
The U.S. is at the center of an effort, as Breitbart News has reported, to back a port called Elefsina — a counter to a Chinese-backed port called Piraeus — in Greece. That port is critical to a major project of Guilfoyle’s called the “vertical corridor,” which ships energy up through Eastern Europe as far as Ukraine. Guilfoyle explained this corridor idea at the Nisyros Dialogues event in February.
“I think they’re kind of excited about the reset, the invigoration, the new energy being poured in here, and that the president put me here on purpose for a very good reason because this is how he sees and views the world, this area of the world, with Greece being a centralized focus and energy hub for Europe and feeding all the way in like the vertical corridor — we love talking about it all the time, the minister and I — but it has a history and a legacy that started but now it’s like we’re making the vertical corridor great again and pumping American LNG from Greece all the way up to Odessa,” she said. “This is another thing that’s very significant and the [Greek energy] minister and I were with Minister Mitsotakis to sign that incredible deal with President Zelensky. He came to us as a country in need, needing short-term and long-term gas up through the vertical corridor to Odessa to try to get through the winter, to fight for his country because he was fighting a war of attrition from the Russians who wanted to black out Ukraine and bring them to their knees where they didn’t have heat, they didn’t have light, they didn’t have energy. When you think about it, as we say energy is national security, Ukraine having the ability to defend itself, to keep the lights on, to survive the winter, to survive energy terror and an energy infrastructure war, allows them to have a greater positioning at the negotiation table to be able to fight against a country that wants to destroy them. You think about that because if they don’t have that ability and they don’t get the support from their allies they could lose their country.”