BRUSSELS, Aug 21 (Reuters) – NATO’s top commander convened a videoconference earlier this week to facilitate possible \u200ccontributions to support freedom of navigation in \u200cthe Strait of Hormuz, his spokesperson told Reuters, adding that this \u200bis not a NATO mission.<\/p>\n
“Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe hosted a meeting of interested Allies at the chief of defence level on Wednesday, 19 Aug 26, in order \u200cto facilitate their \u2060possible contributions to support freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” a spokesperson \u2060for the alliance’s top commander U.S. Air Force General Alexus Grynkewich said on Friday.<\/p>\n
“To be clear, this is not \u200ba NATO \u200bmission. But given NATO’s \u200bunique strengths in its \u200cability to bring together Allies and understand the capabilities they bring to bear, it makes sense for NATO to facilitate in this way,” the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n
NATO allies have sought to avoid direct involvement in the Iran conflict, \u200cinstead focusing on plans outside \u200bthe alliance to reopen the \u200bstrait, which before February \u200bcarried about a fifth of all \u200ctraded oil.<\/p>\n
France and Britain have \u200bled efforts to \u200bbuild a coalition among roughly a dozen countries to guarantee safe passage through the strait once \u200btensions ease or \u200cthe conflict is resolved, though any long-term arrangement \u200bwould ultimately require Iranian acquiescence.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Lili \u200bBayer; Editing by David Gregorio)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BRUSSELS, Aug 21 (Reuters) – NATO’s top commander convened a videoconference earlier this week to facilitate possible \u200ccontributions…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11544,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6858,7,287,5297,187],"class_list":["post-11543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-contributions","tag-nato","tag-nato-allies","tag-spokesperson","tag-strait-of-hormuz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}