US Allies See No Way of Opening Hormuz Strait During War

Europe’s biggest naval powers don’t see away of reopening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping before the Iran war subsides.

The continent continues to resist Donald Trump’s calls to deploy warships to the strait over fears they will be attacked by Iran. While European officials are discussinga plan to help escort oil tankers and othervessels, they are unlikely to send naval assets until the conflict eases and they get a clearer sense of both a US plan and the Iranian threat.

Discussions for what military support can be sent to the region are in the “very early stages,” said UK Defense Minister Al Carns, with allies currently focused on “trying to conceptualize the totality of the problem and make sure that we’ve got a clear path toward the next stage.”

He warned that during conflict, escorts wouldn’t be enough to protect vessels in a situation requiring a “deeply complex” multinational range of air, maritime and strike capabilities. The warning comes a week after Carns’s boss, UK Defense Secretary John Healey, warned that Iran was likely laying mines in the strait.

Iran “is close to demolished, the only thing is the strait: It’s very hard,” Trump told reporters on Thursday. “You could take two people and they could drop little bombs in the water, and they’re holding things up.”

Energy prices have soared, driving concerns of an inflationary spike, with overnight attacks on the world’s largest LNG facility in Qatar darkening the outlook. European gas futures surged as much as 35% on Thursday and Brent crude rising as high as $117 a barrel. Bonds also tumbled worldwide on expectation of higher interest rates as a result of the inflationary pressures.

European capitals are preparing to combine military and insurance options for a post-conflict transition period. Britain has been readying assets in recent days for when they deem it safe enough to send them to the region, and have sent additional military planners to the US Central Command in Florida to help prepare a strategy for when hostilities ease. The UK has been in talks with Lloyds of London — the world’s largest insurance market — about insurance products and prices for when that happens, according to people familiar with the matter.

FrenchPresident Emmanuel Macron has repeatedly said France won’t take part in operations to open up the Strait of Hormuz for now, but he stands ready to work with other countries, including non-European, on a system of escorts when the situation is calmer. The French leader has insisted that efforts will require discussions with Iran.

It marks a widening disconnection between the US and Europe over the Iran war, with Trump stepping up criticisms of his allies — describing their decision not to get involved as a “foolish mistake.”

Most European nations are urging the US to de-escalate the conflict. Though Trump insists he didn’t know that Israel was planning to strike Iran’s South Pars — part of the world’s largest natural gas field — before Tehran retaliated against Qatar, it’s highly likely that Israel did inform the US, officials told Bloomberg. Rather than de-escalate, he has since threatened to “massively blow up the entirety” of the Iranian gas field if Iran struck Qatar again.

UK Trade Minister Chris Bryant said one of his counterparts in the Gulf complained to him on Wednesday that the US “don’t know what they’re doing.”

“It just doesn’t feel like there’s been a plan or if there is a plan it’s changing every single day,” Bryant told Sky News on Thursday. “It seems to me rather obvious that the first thing they would do to retaliate is to try to close the Straits of Hormuz.”

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