A call by President Donald Trump for Asian and European countries to send warships to help unblock oil supplies from the Persian Gulf received a cautious public response Sunday as a global oil shock from the war in Iran continued to reverberate through the global economy.<\/p>\n
Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, said Sunday there were \u201cno guarantees\u201d that oil prices would fall in the coming weeks. And he was vague about when the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial oil gateway, would be safe to navigate for tankers.<\/p>\n
On Saturday, in a social media post that appeared to acknowledge the difficulty of securing the strait, Trump publicly called on assistance from Britain, China, France, Japan and South Korea.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have already destroyed 100% of Iran\u2019s Military capability, but it\u2019s easy for them to send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile somewhere along, or in, this Waterway, no matter how badly defeated they are,\u201d Trump wrote.<\/p>\n
In a second post, he said of other countries\u2019 involvement: \u201cThis should have always been a team effort, and now it will be.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, reinforced the president\u2019s message in a pair of television interviews Sunday, where he noted that the majority of oil coming out of the Gulf goes to Asia.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s absolutely correct for President Trump to call on the world to come help make sure their energy supplies are secure,\u201d Waltz said on Fox News Sunday.<\/p>\n
Publicly, the calls for assistance received a tepid reaction from the countries Trump named. A senior Japanese official warned that any decision to deploy warships would face \u201chigh hurdles.\u201d<\/p>\n
The office of South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said in a statement that it would \u201ccommunicate closely with the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n
But a long-term disruption in Gulf oil flows would be so catastrophic for the global economy that it seemed possible that leaders were discussing cooperating with the American plan behind closed doors.<\/p>\n
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer spoke to Trump on Sunday evening about the strait, according to a spokesperson for the prime minister. The two men discussed \u201cthe importance of reopening the Strait of Hormuz to end the disruption to global shipping,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
China and France did not respond publicly to Trump\u2019s plea. Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said his government would be willing to use its navy to escort ships but only if the conflict stabilized.<\/p>\n
The blockage of the Strait of Hormuz has emerged as Iran\u2019s most potent weapon in the face of daily barrage of strikes by U.S. and Israeli missiles and warplanes.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s ability to choke global energy supplies and create a surge in the price of oil, a military strategy the country\u2019s leaders have planned for decades, threatens a major blow to the global economy. In addition to oil and gas, the Gulf is a gateway for fertilizer. The cut in supply threatens a further rise in global food prices that have already become more expensive by inflation in recent years.<\/p>\n
Democrats have ramped up criticism of the administration for launching a war and failing to prepare for the global consequences of the energy shock.<\/p>\n
The New York Times reported last week that before the war Trump and his advisers miscalculated the scope of Iran\u2019s retaliations and the extent to which the country could wreak havoc on energy markets.<\/p>\n
Trump said last week that the U.S. Navy would \u201csoon\u201d escort ships through the strait but offered no timetable for the plan, which experts say will be difficult to carry out given the strait\u2019s proximity to the Iranian mainland and the plethora of weapons \u2014 mines, drones, rockets \u2014 that Iran stockpiled before the war.<\/p>\n
Last week, the Pentagon dispatched additional warships and 2,500 Marines to the Middle East. And Trump threatened to attack oil infrastructure on Kharg Island, home to Iran\u2019s main oil export terminal, unless Iran allowed ships to pass through the strait.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in a post on social media Sunday that the strait was \u201copen to everyone, except American ships and those of its allies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Since the start of the war, Iran has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks on ships in and around the Gulf, including a Thai vessel on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Iranian state media released a statement attributed to the country\u2019s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, that directed the military to continue blocking the Strait of Hormuz, calling it a \u201clever.\u201d<\/p>\n
But on Saturday, Trump questioned whether Iran\u2019s new supreme leader was alive.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m hearing he\u2019s not alive and, if he is, he should do something very smart for his country and that\u2019s surrender,\u201d Trump told NBC News in an interview late Saturday, without providing details or evidence to support his statement.<\/p>\n
Khamenei has not been seen in public since being selected to his new role more than a week ago. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Friday that the ayatollah had been \u201cwounded and likely disfigured.\u201d<\/p>\n
Araghchi said in an interview Saturday with MS Now that there was \u201cno problem\u201d with the supreme leader.<\/p>\n
Fighting continued Sunday across the Middle East. The Israeli military said it hit bases of Iran\u2019s Revolutionary Guard and the Basij militia in the western part of the country.<\/p>\n
The Guard said on state media that it was continuing to shoot at Israel and U.S. assets throughout the region. Iranian ballistic missiles set off air raid alerts in central and southern Israel on Sunday, the Israeli military said.<\/p>\n
Authorities in the United Arab Emirates said Sunday that aerial defenses were intercepting incoming fire over Dubai, while Saudi Arabia\u2019s Defense Ministry said it had intercepted incoming drones in the country\u2019s eastern province and near the capital of Riyadh. Neither country said where the enemy projectiles were coming from, but Iran has repeatedly fired on both in recent days.<\/p>\n
In Iraq, five missiles struck Baghdad International Airport and injured four people, among them airport staff and security personnel, according to Lt. Gen Saad Maan, the head of the Iraqi Security Media Cell. A powerful Iraqi militia that is backed by Iran, Kataib Hezbollah, said it launched the missile attack.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A call by President Donald Trump for Asian and European countries to send warships to help unblock oil…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":21599,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[26],"tags":[39],"class_list":["post-21598","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-persian-gulf","tag-persian-gulf"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116238684204366485","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21598","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21598"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21598\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21599"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21598"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21598"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21598"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}