Trump says that Nato has offered to help “clean out” the Strait of Hormuz, in comments made to Fox News shortly after he announced plans to blockade the key shipping lane.
He says the US was “very disappointed with Nato”, but that “now they want to come and they want to help with the strait”.
“It won’t take long to clean it out, so we’re gonna clean out the strait”, he tells the outlet, adding that he thinks it will be free to use again “in not too long a distance”.
He also says that the US is bringing in minesweepers, and that the UK – a member of Nato – will too. “I understand the UK and a couple of other countries are sending minesweepers”, he tells the outlet.
US President Donald Trump’s threat to blockade the Strait of Hormuz will only affect a small handful of vessels that are still navigating the waterway, shipping expert Lars Jensen says.
“If this is actually done by the Americans, it will halt a very tiny trickle of vessels. In the greater scheme of things, it doesn’t really change anything,” he says.
Jensen, chief executive of Vespucci Maritime, says Trump’s threat of preventing safe passage for any ships paying tolls to Iran would also have little impact, as any company doing so would already face sanctions for paying the regime.
“First of all, there’s very few ships that pass. There’s even fewer of those that pay, and those that pay will already be subject to American sanctions,” he says.
Most shipping companies will continue to wait and see if there is a tentative peace agreement and whether that might hold, Jensen says, and if that occurs, a slow ramping up of shipping may resume.
As for what it would take shipping lines to decide whether it was safe to transit the strait again, he says the honest answer from those firms would be that they don’t know.
“Because at the end of it, it boils down to trust: trust that any agreement between the US and Iranians will hold for a significant portion of time, and that’s a subjective feeling, there is nothing hard and tangible you can point to,” he says.
President Trump is known to want quick deals.
We had wondered how he might react to the failure to agree to come to an agreement in Islamabad… we can now see his first response.
Across two lengthy social media posts, he says he will block the few ships that are currently making it through the Strait of Hormuz.
“I have instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas.”
The posts do not make it clear how “safe passage” will be denied, but it is worth remembering that the US has, in just the last few months, boarded vessels en route to or from Venezuela.
Crucially, he also says “Other Countries will be involved with this Blockade”, without specifying who.
Iran’s selective – but effective – blockade of one of the world’s most important waterways has generally only been bypassed by ships either aligned to Iran, to nations Tehran considers friendly, or by vessels that are thought to have paid a toll, believed to be around $2m (£1.5m).
He also suggests that Iran has promised to open the Straits.
Going by their public statements, they have repeatedly said the reverse, seeking formal recognition of what has become maybe their key strategic point of leverage.
If followed through, the president’s threat would further restrict the amount of oil making it to global markets, with associated economic consequences.
These messages are not the full resumption of hostilities that could have ensued, but they are a further escalation.
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