{"id":7146,"date":"2026-04-18T05:46:24","date_gmt":"2026-04-18T05:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7146\/"},"modified":"2026-04-18T05:46:24","modified_gmt":"2026-04-18T05:46:24","slug":"iran-reports-reopening-strait-of-hormuz-as-paris-summit-plans-european-intervention","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/7146\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran reports reopening Strait of Hormuz as Paris summit plans European intervention"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran announced a shaky reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping yesterday, as 49 countries met in an emergency summit in Paris to plan a naval intervention into the waterway. US President Donald Trump responded, however, by refusing to lift the US naval blockade of Iranian ports. The flurry of announcements, while they produced a fall in oil prices, has neither produced a lasting peace nor resolved any of the fundamental conflicts underlying the war.<\/p>\n

The aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower and the fast combat support ship USNS Supply transit the Strait of Hormuz, Dec. 14, 2023. [Photo: Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Keith Nowak]<\/p>\n

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said that \u201cpassage for all commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open for the remaining period of ceasefire.\u201d Thus the reopening depends on Washington continuing to respect the ceasefire it declared last week, as well as Israel respecting a truce with Lebanon. Under Araghchi\u2019s terms, Iranian military forces will still control which vessels can transit the straight, the shipping lanes they can use, and the tolls they will pay to Iran.<\/p>\n

Trump immediately announced that the US naval blockade of Iran would \u201cremain in full force\u201d until Iran made a comprehensive deal with Washington. Vessels heading to or from Iranian ports remain subject to interception by the US Navy, and Iran\u2019s oil exports remain blocked. Trump claimed that a peace deal is \u201cvery close,\u201d but only days ago, negotiations in Islamabad collapsed after 20 hours of talks.<\/p>\n

Even if the US ceasefire somehow holds however, Trump\u2019s war of aggression against Iran, his calls to plunder Iranian oil and his genocidal threats to annihilate Iranian civilization will have lasting and irreversible economic and political consequences. The massive human and economic toll of the war is only beginning to come into view. Even if fighting does not resume, which is far from guaranteed, this toll will continue to grow in the coming months.<\/p>\n

New wars of extermination have claimed thousands of lives alongside the tens of thousands lost in Israel\u2019s genocide in Gaza. Israel\u2019s invasion of Lebanon has killed at least 2,196 people and displaced over one million.<\/p>\n

Iran reported that it had suffered 1,500 deaths and 18,551 wounded from the war by March 25. However, it is widely expected that it has downplayed casualties, especially those in its military forces, which number several thousand dead at the very least. Over 81,000 civilian buildings have been hit including 61,000 homes, 19,000 commercial properties, 275 medical centers, and 500 schools. At least 3.2 million Iranians are internally displaced within Iran, according to UN figures, mainly fleeing US bombings of major cities.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In a late March statement based on testimony from its employees in Iran, the Norwegian Refugee Council said: \u201cCountless homes, hospitals and schools have been damaged or destroyed. \u2026 (I)n nearly every neighbourhood of Tehran buildings are destroyed with surrounding damages. Desperate families tape their windows to prevent shattered glass that has already caused too many civilians casualties. With no Internet and heavily disrupted banking services, daily life is increasingly difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n

Moreover, International Energy Agency (IEA) Director Fatih Birol warned this week that the world economy now faces \u201cthe greatest energy security threat in history,\u201d comparable to the combined impact of the 1970s oil shock and the 2022 cutoff of Russian gas supplies. Birol warned, \u201cwe lost 13 million barrels (of oil) per day. Tomorrow may be bigger. In terms of gas, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we lost about 75 [billion cubic meters], and today we are much higher than that \u2026 The longer the disruption lasts, the more severe the problem becomes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shortages are set to mount rapidly in the coming months. Over the last month, refineries were still receiving Persian Gulf energy shipments that had left before the war started, Birol added, but \u201cduring the month of April, nothing has been loaded.\u201d Moreover, over a third of the Persian Gulf\u2019s 80 most critical energy facilities monitored by the IEA have been \u201cseverely damaged.\u201d Returning them to normal output could take 2 to 5 years, assuming there are no further wars.<\/p>\n

Above all, however, energy, shipping and insurance companies have no clear idea whether or how long the current ceasefire, which Trump has set to expire on April 22, will last. Ships are therefore not passing through the Strait of Hormuz. This means that the coming energy shortages, resulting surges in prices, and hardships for the working class will be even greater than if it had been possible to restart operations today.<\/p>\n

The major capitalist powers\u2019 inability to coordinate any progressive, rational policy in response to the coming global shock was on display yesterday in the Paris summit. Leaders of France, Britain, Italy and Germany met in Paris; those of 45 other countries including European countries, Persian Gulf sheikdoms, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Ukraine attended by videoconference. It focused on planning their own military and naval intervention into the Persian Gulf.<\/p>\n

The Paris summit communiqu\u00e9 featured no criticism of the criminal actions of the US government, its launching of an illegal war of aggression, its calls for a genocide of Iranian civilization, or war crimes like mass targeting of civilian infrastructure. It was silent on the fact that the US blockade of Hormuz is an act of war against not only Iran, but their countries\u2019 own vital energy supplies. It aimed instead to position these governments in the coming conflicts over what energy resources will remain available.<\/p>\n

From left: German chancellor Friedrich Merz, French President Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni arrive at the Elysee Palace for a conference on the initiative for maritime navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, in Paris, Friday April 17, 2026. [AP Photo\/Jeanne Accorsini]<\/p>\n

Available from Mehring Books<\/p>\n

The struggle against imperialism and for workers\u2019 power in Iran<\/p>\n

A pamphlet by Keith Jones<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

The summit called for \u201cthe unconditional, unrestricted, and immediate re-opening of the Strait of Hormuz.\u201d It pledged to work with \u201cshipping operators, insurers, and industry bodies\u201d so they \u201ccan resume operations as soon as conditions permit.\u201d It proposed that Britain and France would lead a \u201cstrictly defensive multinational mission to protect merchant vessels, reassure commercial shipping operators, and conduct mine clearance operations as soon as conditions permit following a sustainable ceasefire agreement.\u201d<\/p>\n

The claim that a deployment led by two leading former colonial powers in the Middle East would be \u201cstrictly defensive,\u201d after they acquiesced to the US war of aggression against Iran, is ludicrous. Britain and France are imperialist powers. While it is unclear whether conditions\u2014that is to say, Iranian missile and drone forces\u2014will allow them to deploy their warships to the Gulf, it is evident that they are intervening to defend their military bases and oil profits in the region.<\/p>\n

Significantly, European officials at the Paris summit called for both military coordination with the Trump administration and German military participation in the operation. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz proposed \u201ca deployment of the German army in the context of an international mission \u2026 So we will participate in discussions on military planning that will soon take place. And we would also like to consider participation by the United States of America.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Merz\u2019s call to coordinate with US forces underscores European governments\u2019 complicity in US government criminality, his call for military coordination with US imperialism cannot paper over the explosive conflicts between the NATO imperialist powers. The fact that these leaders met without any formal US participation, effectively disinviting the United States while the US Navy blockaded their energy supplies, points to the deep-going collapse of US-European relations.<\/p>\n

Tensions are also mounting with China, which was invited to attend the Paris summit but ultimately declined to do so as US officials threatened its energy trade with Iran.<\/p>\n

Deepening global wars and economic crises will not only expose the criminality of imperialism, but also provoke growing opposition among workers internationally. It is this progressive social force that must come forward against a mortal crisis of the capitalist system. The decisive question is the independent, international mobilization of the working class against imperialist war and to take power out of the hands of the capitalist oligarchies that are profiting from the mass slaughter and impoverishment of working people.<\/p>\n

Sign up for the WSWS email newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran announced a shaky reopening of the Strait of Hormuz to commercial shipping yesterday, as 49 countries met…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7147,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5562,50,30,340,5894,584],"class_list":{"0":"post-7146","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-paris","8":"tag-imperialism","9":"tag-iran","10":"tag-paris","11":"tag-strait-of-hormuz","12":"tag-summit","13":"tag-war"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7146"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7146\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/france\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}