By Enyichukwu Enemanna
The US President, Donald Trump has ratcheted up the pressure on European allies to help protect the Strait of Hormuz, in response to the closure of the vital waterway by Tehran in retaliation for airstrikes by the US and Israel.
The US leader warns that NATO faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid.
The closure of Strait of Hormuz has proved catastrophic for global energy and trade flows, causing the largest oil supply disruption in history and soaring global oil prices.
Trump’s call for allies to enter the war by sending ships to the strait to protect commercial shipping vessels and unblock global oil supplies has met a muted response.
Australia, France, Japan and the UK are among the countries to have said they have no plans to send ships.
Trump told the Financial Times in an interview: “It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there. If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of Nato.”
European Union foreign ministers will discuss on Monday bolstering a small naval mission in the Middle East but are not expected to decide on extending its role to the strait.
Trump also told the FT he “may delay” a summit with China’s Xi Jinping as he ramped up the pressure on Beijing, an Iran ally, to help secure the strait. It was reported last week that China was in talks with Tehran to allow safe oil and gas passage.
Trump said he expected China to help unblock the strait before he flies to Beijing. “I think China should help, too, because China gets 90% of its oil from the straits,” he said, suggesting that waiting until the summit would be too late. “We’d like to know before that.”
On Sunday Trump said his administration had already contacted seven countries for support, but he declined to identify them.
In an earlier social media post, he said he hoped China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others would participate.
“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One on the way from Florida to Washington on Sunday. “It’s the place from which they get their energy,” he added.
