U.S. allies respond to Trump’s Strait of Hormuz demands with caution

LONDON — President Donald Trump has berated and threatened America’s NATO allies. He now wants those same countries to help unblock the Strait of Hormuz – and their response has not been exactly enthusiastic.

“This is not our war, we did not start it,” German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius told reporters on Monday.

That appeared to sum up the mood among U.S. allies, with leaders from Berlin to London expressing reservations over Trump’s demands and indicating they had no immediate plans to provide military support to reopen the crucial waterway.

Iran effectively closed the trade route in response to the US-Israeli assault launched last month. This sent global oil prices soaring and threatened an international economic shock, something economists had warned of before the war began.

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Trump called on “countries around the world that receive oil through the Strait of Hormuz” to “take care of this passage,” as he said in an article published Sunday on Truth Social. In an interview with the Financial Times the same day, he went further, warning that NATO would have a “very bad future” if its members did not help liberate the strait.

It was “a little rich” of Trump to ask for help from countries he had previously insulted, former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves told NBC News in a telephone interview Monday.

Earlier, Estonian Foreign Minister Margus Tsahkna asked Trump to provide more information. Europe needed to understand Trump’s “strategic goals. What will the plan be?” he asked.

Although they often fear risking the president’s wrath, many European governments are reluctant to wade into war with Tehran.

Some, like Spain’s left-wing government, have flatly refused Hormuz’s request.

“Spain will never accept any provisional measures” to keep the strait open, Defense Minister Margarita Robles said, “because the goal must be for the war to end and for it to end now.”

Even in Italy, whose Prime Minister Georgia Meloni has already presented herself as something of a Trump whisperer, the government has refused to get involved.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani told reporters that “diplomacy must prevail.”

In Britain, Prime Minister Keir Starmer was criticized by Trump for not participating in the initial attack on Iran.

Starmer told a press conference on Monday that he was “working with all our allies, including our European partners”, to “restore freedom of navigation” as quickly as possible.

“Ultimately, we need to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ensure market stability,” he said. “It’s not a simple task.”

But Starmer made clear he would not be drawn into “a wider war” and that any mission to Hormuz would have to be a broader effort – including the US and Gulf states – rather than something for NATO.

Meanwhile, Japan and Australia said they had no plans to send ships to meet Trump’s request.

Other proposals are on the table, such as that of European diplomat Kaja Kallas who proposed on Monday an agreement similar to that of 2022 which guaranteed Ukraine the possibility of exporting cereals in the midst of the Russian invasion.

The dispute over the Strait constitutes the latest point of tension between the Trump administration and Washington’s historic friends across the Atlantic.

Last year, the president refused to rule out the use of military force to seize Denmark’s semi-autonomous island of Greenland. He then falsely claimed that NATO allies had not fought on the front lines in Afghanistan – causing consternation and anger across the continent.

“It’s a bit ironic, after threatening Denmark and insulting the memory of a thousand NATO soldiers who fought in Afghanistan, to say, ‘Oh, you all have to come and help us now,'” said Ilves, who served as Estonia’s president between 2006 and 2016. “If countries send troops and something happens to them, will he still make fun of them?” he added.

“It’s a political failure from the start,” he said. “I’m not sure what he expected.”

Ultimately, much of Europeans’ skepticism about Trump’s Hormuz demands appears to stem from their distrust of the war itself.

“The European response must be: the way to end the problem is to end the war, not to join it,” said Sven Biscop, director of the Egmont Institute, a Belgian think tank. He said the main thing was “not to be intimidated by Trump’s threats against NATO.”

Asked about the European reaction, the White House referred NBC News to comments from Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who told reporters that those countries should help because they “benefit greatly from the U.S. military eliminating the Iranian threat.”

She added that “the president is absolutely right to call on these countries to do more to help the United States reopen the Strait of Hormuz so that we can prevent this terrorist regime from restricting the free flow of energy.”

Although several ships have been bombed while trying to pass through the strait, Iran denies having entirely closed the narrow water pass. After the United States and Israel launched the war, they declared that they would attack the ships of those countries or their allies.

“From our point of view, the Strait of Hormuz is open and closed only to enemies,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi wrote on Telegram.