Two months after President Donald Trump belittled NATO allies for their lackluster efforts in Afghanistan, he warned that the alliance faces a “very bad” future if those same allies fail to help the United States secure the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has effectively blocked following U.S. and Israeli attacks.
In an interview with the Financial Times on Sunday, President Trump said, “It’s only natural that the people who are the beneficiaries of the Straits work together to prevent bad things from happening in the Straits.” “I think if there is no response, or if there is a negative response, it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”
President Trump’s latest threats against the alliance have Europe in a bind. Since Trump returned to the White House, European leaders have faced a number of punishments from Washington in the form of tariffs, verbal abuse and territorial threats to keep them from abandoning U.S. aid to Ukraine. Now, President Trump appears to be raising prices by demanding that U.S. allies do “whatever it takes” to secure the straits through which one-fifth of the world’s oil normally flows.
But this time, America’s allies have balked at President Trump’s request to send warships to support oil shipments through the strait, suggesting there are limits to how far Europe can go to keep him in Ukraine and demonstrating the consequences of Trump’s derisive attitude toward the alliance.
“This war has nothing to do with NATO. It is not a NATO war,” a spokesman for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said on Monday. “Participation was not under consideration before the war, and it is not under consideration now.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius also rejected Trump’s request. “What does President Trump expect a handful or two of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do?” he asked. “This is not our war. We did not start it.”
The comments were a far cry from the tentative support Mertz expressed during his visit to the White House for the U.S. and Israeli attack on Iran. On March 3, sitting next to Trump in the Oval Office, Mertz said the United States and Germany were “on the same page” when it came to eliminating “this horrible regime in Tehran.”
European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Callas also reacted tepidly to Trump’s request for help, saying the strait was “outside NATO’s range of action.”
On Monday, foreign ministers from EU countries discussed options to secure the Strait of Hormuz, but there was “no appetite” to expand naval operations in the region, Karas said.
“This is not a European war, but European interests are at direct risk,” she said.
Officials from Italy, Japan and Australia also said their countries would not take part in efforts to reopen the strait.
Even those countries that expressed their intention to help did so only vaguely. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the government was working with allies to reopen the Channel, without giving details. Earlier this month, when Mr Starmer considered sending a British aircraft carrier to the Middle East, Mr Trump told him not to bother. “We don’t need people going to war after we’ve already won!” he wrote in Truth Social.
Mr Starmer’s ambiguity may be a sign that US allies have no good options for encouraging Iran to reopen the strait. By contrast, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), which currently has effective control of the waterway, has “multiple options for mischief,” said retired General Nick Carter, former UK chief of defense staff.
Mr Carter told the BBC that the IRGC “has everything from land-based missiles and unmanned aircraft to armed fast ships, unmanned surface vessels and unmanned aircraft.” He said Western militaries had not put “mine clearance operations at the forefront of our naval capabilities” and warned that it would be “difficult” to send warships to escort oil tankers through the strait.
Julian Barnes Dacey, head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said Europe’s strategy toward Iran was initially driven by a desire to “keep ‘Daddy’ Trump happy” and maintain U.S. support in Ukraine.
But the Iran war has exposed the limits of that strategy, he said. In the Middle East, Western stocks of ammunition and interceptor missiles are depleting, while soaring energy prices and the Trump administration’s temporary lifting of sanctions on Russian oil shipped by sea are providing a lifeline to Russia’s economy.
“The fact that President Trump is not focused on Ukraine and has granted Russia sanctions waivers further weakens the argument that aligning with President Trump is the path to securing European interests in Ukraine,” Burns Dacey told CNN.
In an interview with the Financial Times, President Trump said he doubted America’s allies would heed his request for help.
“We were very nice. We didn’t have to help them with the Ukraine issue. Ukraine is thousands of miles away from us,” he said. “But we helped them. Now we’ll see if they’ll help us. Because I’ve said for a long time that I’ll be there for them, but they won’t be there for us. And I don’t know if they’ll be there.”
Carter said President Trump’s approach to the alliance is “a little bit cynical.”
“NATO…was created as a defense alliance,” he said. “It was not an alliance designed for one of the allies to go to war of their own choice and then obligate other nations to follow. It was not designed that way at all. None of us wanted to be in a NATO like that.”
