President Donald Trump is demanding that U.S. allies commit to clearing up the mess his war with Iran has made of the Middle East and the global energy market.
The White House is leaning hard on partners in Europe to help safeguard oil transportation in the Strait of Hormuz, the vital trade corridor in the Persian Gulf through which roughly 20 percent of the world’s oil passes, and which the Iranian regime has otherwise shut down since the conflict began, Bloomberg reports.
Trump’s aides laid out the president’s demands during a NATO summit at the White House, a senior alliance official told the publication Wednesday. A coalition of roughly 40 countries, led by the U.K., had earlier pledged to help reopen the waterway once hostilities cease.
The president, after threatening to eradicate the “whole civilization” of Iran with strikes critics warned would almost certainly amount to war crimes, agreed a tentative 14-day ceasefire with the Islamic regime Tuesday night. By Wednesday morning, the deal was already showing signs of strain.
The agreement hangs on a mutual stay to hostilities, and on Iran allowing oil tankers to pass through the strait unhindered. Iran and Israel have since continued to exchange fire, citing disputes over whether the deal applies to Israel’s concurrent conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed at the time of writing.
Those factors have created confusion about whether Trump’s deal, which has secured a temporary pause in U.S. strikes, does, in fact, represent a sufficient end to hostilities for the U.K.-led coalition to make good on its pledge of assistance as soon as the violence has ceased.
Trump sought to dispel that confusion by demanding U.S. allies present what Bloomberg describes as “concrete plans” to protect the strait within a matter of “days,” piling on the pressure with a Truth Social post Wednesday afternoon in which he declared: “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN.”
The president is a longstanding critic of the alliance, which has underpinned Western security since the end of World War II. He has blasted fellow NATO members as “cowards” and as a collective “paper tiger,” threatening to effectively end the U.S. obligations under the teams of the organization’s underlying treaty.
The Daily Beast has contacted the White House for comment on this story.
