Trump Criticizes Allied Nations for Refusing to Help Secure Strait of Hormuz

'We Will Remember': Trump's Strait of Hormuz Loyalty Test Exposes a Fractured Western Alliance

Two and a half weeks into Operation Epic Fury — the joint U.S.-Israeli military campaign against Iran that has killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, displaced 3.2 million people, and effectively shut down the world's most important oil chokepoint — President Donald Trump is discovering that waging a war is easier than assembling a coalition to manage its consequences.

On Saturday, March 15, Trump publicly called on at least seven nations — China, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Australia — to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz to help reopen the waterway through which 20% of global oil trade passes [1]. By Monday, not a single country had agreed. The diplomatic rebuff, the most sweeping rejection of a U.S. security demand in NATO's 77-year history, has laid bare a fundamental rupture: America's closest allies view the Hormuz crisis not as a shared emergency requiring collective action, but as a self-inflicted wound from a war they were never consulted about.

"Whether we get support or not, I can say this, and I said it to them: We will remember," Trump warned from aboard Air Force One [2].

The Demand

Trump's appeal was framed not as a request but as an obligation. In an interview with the Financial Times, he warned that "it will be very bad for the future of NATO" if member states fail to help police the strait [3]. Speaking to reporters, he cast the demand as a loyalty test: "I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory" [1].

The logic, from the White House perspective, is straightforward. Europe imports roughly 20% of its oil through the Strait of Hormuz. Japan depends on the waterway for approximately 80% of its crude imports, South Korea for 70%, and China for 45% [4]. If these nations benefit from freedom of navigation, Trump argues, they should share the burden of maintaining it.

But the argument has a fatal flaw that allied leaders have been quick to identify: the Strait of Hormuz was open before the United States launched Operation Epic Fury on February 28. It was the U.S.-Israeli strikes — including the assassination of Supreme Leader Khamenei — that triggered Iran's retaliatory blockade. Asking allies to help reopen a waterway that Washington's own actions closed has struck many capitals as both strategically incoherent and politically toxic.

The Refusals

The responses from allied capitals ranged from diplomatic hedging to blunt rejection.

Germany was the most direct. A spokesman for Chancellor Friedrich Merz stated flatly: "It is not NATO's war. As long as this war continues, there will be no involvement, not even in an option to keep the Strait of Hormuz open by military means" [5]. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius added a pointed operational question: "What does Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do?" [1]

Italy's Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said: "Italy is not at war with anyone and sending military ships in a war zone would mean entering the war" [1]. Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani opposed expanding existing naval missions to cover the strait, noting they are "anti-piracy and defensive missions" [6].

Spain's Defense Minister Margarita Robles declared that Spain "will never accept any stopgap measures" and that "the objective must be for the war to end" [6].

Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said no decisions had been made about dispatching escort ships, pending examination of legal frameworks [6]. Australia's Transport Minister Catherine King stated the country had "no plans" to send ships and was "unaware of any formal request" [6]. Ireland confirmed it would not participate. Greece said it would only participate within the existing EU Aspides mission framework.

EU Foreign Affairs Representative Kaja Kallas captured the continental mood: "There is no appetite in changing the mandate of operation Aspides, for now. Europe has no interest in an open-ended war" [6].

The UK: Caught in the Middle

The United Kingdom, America's closest military ally, has found itself in the most uncomfortable position. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has tried to thread the needle between maintaining the "special relationship" and avoiding entanglement in a war his government never endorsed.

Trump revealed that he had asked Starmer two weeks ago to send ships, and was rebuffed. "I was very surprised with the United Kingdom," Trump said. "I was not happy with the U.K. I think they'll be involved, but they should be involved enthusiastically" [7].

Starmer responded carefully, saying the UK is "working with its allies to bring together a viable plan" but insisted Britain would "not be drawn into the wider war" [6]. The compromise emerging from London involves sending mine-hunting drones — autonomous systems originally developed jointly with Ukraine to counter Iranian-made Shahed drones — rather than warships [8]. UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband confirmed British planners are also studying the deployment of Octopus interceptor drones to defend ships from aerial attacks.

But even this limited contribution faces serious practical obstacles. Bloomberg reported that mine-sweeping drones remain an "imperfect" solution: the ships controlling them must operate close enough to the strait to fall within range of Iranian anti-ship missiles, and the technology has never been tested in a contested, actively-mined waterway [9].

The Only Dissenting Voice

Finland's President Alexander Stubb offered the sole cautionary note to his fellow NATO members, warning that allies should "take Donald Trump at his word" when the U.S. president puts the future of the alliance on the line [10]. The warning reflects a calculation among some smaller NATO members — particularly those on Russia's border — that antagonizing Washington over Hormuz could have consequences for European security guarantees that matter far more to them than Middle Eastern oil routes.

The Mine Problem

Behind the diplomatic crisis lies a stark military reality. Iran began laying mines in the strait around March 10, and U.S. Central Command responded by destroying 16 Iranian minelaying vessels [11]. But Iran retains 80-90% of its small boats and minelaying capacity, meaning it could feasibly deploy hundreds of additional mines in the waterway [12].

The U.S. Navy, critically, decommissioned its last dedicated minesweepers just months before the war began. According to Columbia University's Center on Global Energy Policy, the best mine-clearing vessels in Europe are "months away from showing up at the Strait of Hormuz," while America's more limited resources could clear the strait only "over significant numbers of weeks" [12].

This gap helps explain why Trump's demand rings hollow to many allies: even if they wanted to send warships, the strait cannot be safely reopened without mine-clearing capabilities that barely exist in the Western naval inventory.

Source: GDELT Project

Data as of Mar 17, 2026CSV

Iran's Selective Passage: A New Oil Order

While the strait remains closed to Western-allied shipping, Iran has been selectively granting passage to nations willing to deal on Tehran's terms. Since the blockade began, Iran has shipped at least 11.7 million barrels of crude through the strait — all of it to China [13]. Pakistan, India, and Turkey have also received permission for individual transits.

Most consequentially, Iran is considering formalizing a policy that would allow passage for tankers whose cargo is priced in Chinese yuan rather than U.S. dollars [14]. If adopted widely, the policy would redirect a portion of structural global energy demand away from the dollar, threatening one of the foundational pillars of dollar reserve dominance. Analysts at the South China Morning Post have urged caution about the proposal's viability, but the symbolism alone has rattled currency markets [14].

The selective passage policy has created a two-tier system that rewards nations maintaining economic ties with Iran and punishes those aligned with the U.S.-Israeli coalition — precisely inverting the pressure Trump is trying to apply to his own allies.

The Economic Toll

The blockade has produced the largest oil supply disruption in the history of the global market. Gulf oil flows through the strait have plunged from approximately 20 million barrels per day before the war to a trickle, and Gulf countries have cut total production by at least 10 million barrels per day [15].

WTI crude oil, which traded around $67 per barrel before the war, surged past $94 by March 9 — a 40% increase in barely ten days. Brent futures briefly touched $120 before retreating to around $92 as the IEA authorized a record 400-million-barrel release from emergency reserves [15][16].

Source: FRED / U.S. Energy Information Administration

Data as of Mar 11, 2026CSV

Goldman Sachs economists have modeled a scenario where Brent averages $98 through March and April, raising their 2026 U.S. inflation forecast by 0.8 percentage points and trimming GDP growth by 0.3 points [15]. Oxford Economics modeled a more severe scenario where prices average $140, which they characterized as a "breaking point" that would push the eurozone, the UK, and Japan into recession [15].

What Comes Next

The diplomatic impasse leaves the United States in an increasingly isolated position. Having launched a war without allied support and now failing to secure allied help managing its economic fallout, Washington faces a set of options that range from unpalatable to dangerous.

The U.S. could attempt to clear the strait unilaterally, but without adequate minesweeping capacity, this would be slow, costly, and hazardous. It could escalate further against Iran's oil infrastructure — Trump has already threatened to target Kharg Island's export terminals if the blockade continues [17]. Or it could seek a diplomatic off-ramp, though Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has declared the strait will remain closed as a "tool to pressure the enemy" and his foreign minister has flatly rejected ceasefire talks [18].

The deeper question is whether Trump's "loyalty test" will have lasting consequences for the Western alliance. Germany's declaration that the Iran conflict is "not NATO's war" represents a remarkable assertion of strategic autonomy from Europe's largest economy. If NATO's mutual defense commitment can be selectively invoked for wars of choice, allied leaders are signaling, then the concept of collective security itself needs renegotiation.

For now, hundreds of tankers sit idle on both sides of the strait. Oil prices continue to climb. And the world's most powerful military alliance has delivered its verdict on America's demand for help: not our war, not our problem.