Iceland’s government summoned the U.S. ambassador in Reykjavik on Monday, September 7, 2026, after President Donald Trump published an image on Truth Social that draped the American flag over the island and a swath of its neighbors.

The graphic spreads the U.S. flag across Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean along with the United States itself, with one label — “United States of America” — running over the whole landmass. The Gulf of Mexico is labeled “Gulf of America,” and French Caribbean territories including Guadeloupe, Martinique, Saint-Martin and Saint-Barthélemy appear in U.S. colors. Trump said nothing about what the picture was meant to convey when he put it on his social media platform, and no explanation has surfaced since. He did not call for annexation, and his administration has announced no policy to incorporate the countries and territories shown.

A Summons in Reykjavik

Billy Long, Washington’s envoy to Reykjavik, had formally assumed the role only in August when Foreign Minister Thorgerdur Gunnarsdottir summoned him. What Long heard was brief.

“The position was clearly expressed that the post was completely inappropriate,” Iceland’s foreign ministry told RUV.

Gunnarsdottir spoke publicly about the post on September 8. “There is nothing funny or normal about making fun of the sovereignty of states,” she told reporters. In a separate remark to reporters, she added: “If this is supposed to be a joke, then it is a bad joke.”

Greenland Money and Denmark’s Message

Trump has insisted in recent years that the United States must take possession of Greenland, a semi-autonomous Danish territory, and the picture landed in a part of the world already on edge because of it. Those declarations, and his refusal to rule out taking the island by force, have strained ties between Washington and Copenhagen, both NATO founding members, and annoyed other European capitals as well.

Only hours before the president posted, the European Commission had unveiled a €200 million investment in Greenland, roughly $232.5 million, timed to a visit to the territory by its president, Ursula von der Leyen.

Denmark’s prime minister, Mette Frederiksen, took up the question of Greenland’s future head-on in Nuuk, speaking to the Danish news agency Ritzau. “The Greenlandic government and the Greenlandic people have said again and again that they do not want to be American,” she said. She hoped, she added, that nobody in the United States or anywhere else in the world was in any doubt about it.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum answered the map on X, invoking her country’s independence month: “In the month of the homeland we reaffirm that Mexico is not and will not be a colony or protectorate of any foreign country. We are proudly a free, independent and sovereign country.” The image drew protests from Iceland, Denmark, France and other governments.

Iceland’s Referendum and the U.S. Question

Iceland, home to a little more than 400,000 people, had weighed where it belongs only weeks before the post went up. Voters turned down a restart of European Union membership talks in an August referendum held partly against the backdrop of Trump’s ambitions in Greenland.

Backers of resuming the negotiations argued that uncertainty over how far Washington could be counted on was itself a reason to take a closer look. Analysts, though, credited the result chiefly to anxieties about the domestic economy rather than any debate over transatlantic security.

Trump has reached for Iceland before, occasionally as a substitute for Greenland. At the World Economic Forum in Davos in January, he went after NATO for opposing an American takeover of Greenland but kept naming Iceland instead, telling the audience at one point that the allies would not be there for the United States “on Iceland.” In the same appearance he faulted Iceland for a stock market slide and said the country had already cost the United States a great deal of money. A former White House press secretary defended the remarks by explaining that the president had been referring to Greenland as a piece of ice.

He had confused the two countries the day before as well, at a White House news conference where he was defending tariff threats designed to push Denmark into selling Greenland. “Iceland, without tariffs, they wouldn’t even be talking to us about it,” Trump said.

Other neighbors on the map have prompted similar objections to the president’s approach. He has suggested Canada could become the 51st U.S. state, and the renaming of Lake Ontario to “Lake America” was done by executive order. The map was part of a weekend posting spree that also included an image depicting New Mexico as “New America.”

Long, barely a month into his posting in Reykjavik, is left in the middle of the dispute. A former Republican congressman, he once joked that he could become Iceland’s governor if the island nation were ever made a U.S. state, a remark he later apologized for. What the image was meant to represent, and who put it on Trump’s account, remain unclear.