Takaichi faces major test to avoid Trump’s epic fury over Iran war

Ms Sanae Takaichi must have felt her dreams had come true when she took the stage alongside US President Donald Trump aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington in Yokosuka on Oct 28, 2025.

Just one week earlier, she had been appointed Japan’s first-ever woman prime minister. Now, she was presiding over a highly successful visit by the leader of Japan’s most important ally. A visibly elated Ms Takaichi hopped up and down and punched the air as President Trump lauded their countries’ “beautiful friendship”.

Widely praised for her skill in handling Mr Trump’s visit, Ms Takaichi was emboldened to call an early general election for Feb 8 and rode the wave of popularity to a historic victory for her Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).

How long ago this now seems. As she prepares to travel to the United States for her second summit with President Trump on March 19, the dream has become a nightmare.

Ms Takaichi will be the first leader of a major American ally to meet Mr Trump since the US launched Operation Epic Fury against Iran on Feb 28. Instead of yet another opportunity to showcase the strength of the US-Japan alliance, despite points of friction over trade, Ms Takaichi faces instead a high-stakes test – of deflecting demands from a furious US President who in recent days has lashed out at America’s allies for failing to support his military campaign against Iran.

Before the Feb 28 war on Iran upended things, the planning for Ms Takaichi’s first visit to Washington as prime minister was focused largely on tariffs and a 2025 investment deal. In return for Japan investing an extraordinary US$550 billion (S$702 billion), Washington offered to reduce threatened tariffs on Japanese imports to a baseline of 15 per cent.

The agreement, made under Ms Takaichi’s LDP predecessor Shigeru Ishiba, is highly controversial for being heavily skewed in favour of the Americans. Although the financing is Japanese, it’s the US that gets to select and manage the projects and stands to reap the lion’s share of the returns.

Despite having pledged commitments of up to US$36 billion in oil, gas and critical mineral projects as part of the deal, Ms Takaichi is under pressure to announce a larger tranche of projects during her upcoming visit. However, her administration can agree to only investments that have buy-in from Japan’s private sector, and Japanese firms will not agree to projects deemed likely to be loss-making.

A further complication is that there is now uncertainty regarding the Trump administration’s promised tariff rate. After the US Supreme Court ruled in February against many of the Trump tariffs, the administration launched investigations against several countries for possible unfair trade practices that could end up with them facing even higher tariffs. Japan was among those targeted.

Another ‘Zelensky moment’?

But these areas of friction pale beside the huge pressure Ms Takaichi is likely to face to make specific commitments of Japanese military assets to Mr Trump’s war effort against Iran. It has led to chatter about the possibility of Ms Takaichi being “Zelenskied”, a nod to the widely publicised occasion when Mr Trump blew up at Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky during his visit to the White House.

The United States’ war of choice risks becoming a disaster for Japan. With Japan importing 95 per cent of its oil from the Middle East, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which much of this petroleum is shipped, threatens Japan with an energy crisis. The jump in international oil prices is also set to drive inflation and exacerbate the Japanese public’s existing concerns about the cost of living.

Additionally, Tokyo is concerned that the Iran war will divert Washington’s attention from security commitments in East Asia. These fears intensified when it was reported on March 13 that the US had decided to redeploy the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, consisting of around 2,200 personnel, from Okinawa to the Middle East. The worry for Tokyo is that North Korea or China could exploit Washington’s distraction to undertake aggressive action of their own.

A further problem is that America’s war against Iran undermines Japan’s longstanding opposition to changes to the international status quo by force. The Japanese government has consistently condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 on the basis that it was an illegal and unprovoked act of aggression. Tokyo’s fear was that, if Russia were to succeed, it could embolden China to unleash a similar attack against Taiwan.

This principled argument has been seriously weakened now that Japan’s closest ally has launched its own “special military operation”.

For Ms Takaichi, the most immediate challenge at her March 19 White House summit would be managing Mr Trump’s demand that Japan send naval vessels to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which has been effectively shut by Iran in response to the US-Israeli attacks.

This request has not been embraced with enthusiasm by any US ally, yet it is especially problematic for Japan.

Legal restraints and Iran ties

Under current interpretations of Japan’s pacifist Constitution of 1947, armed force can be used only for self-defence. The limited range of circumstances in which force can be used was expanded in 2015 when the government of Mr Shinzo Abe, Ms Takaichi’s late mentor, reinterpreted the Constitution to permit collective self-defence. This permits Japan to use force if a close ally is attacked, even if Japan itself has not been attacked.

This might seem to provide a legal foundation for Japan to send Self-Defence Force vessels to support Mr Trump in the Middle East, yet such collective self-defence can be invoked only in circumstances in which Japan’s survival is threatened.

What is more, Japan cannot use force in support of illegal military action. Mr Abe made this clear when making the case for collective self-defence in May 2015. He stated: “Under international law, a country is not allowed to engage in the unlawful use of force when it has not suffered an armed attack, and it is inconceivable that our country would support such a country.”

There are other good reasons why Tokyo does not want to contribute to the US military campaign. According to an Asahi poll conducted on March 14 and 15, 82 per cent of Japanese voters oppose the US war on Iran.

Added to this, Japan does not want to torpedo its positive relationship with Iran, ties that Tokyo has carefully cultivated for several decades, including through Mr Abe’s visit to Tehran in 2019. Indeed, even during the current war, Japan’s government has maintained contact with Iranian officials, with Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi speaking to his Iranian counterpart on March 17.

All these are reasons to decline Mr Trump’s request, yet this is not a Japan that can say no to the United States. Surrounded by three hostile nuclear-armed neighbours, Japan’s security is fragile and depends heavily on the US security guarantee.

Japan would have more options if it had stable relations with Beijing but ties soured over Ms Takaichi’s remarks in 2025 that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute a “survival-threatening situation”, thus implying Japan could become involved militarily.

Ms Takaichi thus faces an unenviable task: To accord with Japanese law, public opinion and foreign policy interests, she must resist pressure to directly assist America’s war efforts. Yet, at the same time, she must avoid provoking Mr Trump’s own epic fury. He has already vented about ungrateful allies who rebuffed America’s call for help with Iran: “They weren’t that enthusiastic. And the level of enthusiasm matters to me.”

The timing could scarcely be worse, with Ms Takaichi meeting Mr Trump at just the moment when his anger at the “ingratitude” of allies is at its peak. To make matters worse, he feels that Ms Takaichi owes him since he has claimed that his endorsement contributed to her landslide election victory.

To emerge from the Oval Office meeting with bilateral ties unharmed and her own approval ratings intact, Ms Takaichi will need to draw on all her limited foreign policy experience to placate Mr Trump while simultaneously agreeing to the minimal possible concessions, such as providing logistics support outside the war zone. There is no surety that such efforts will work. As the Japanese Prime Minister herself acknowledged on March 18, the upcoming meeting with Mr Trump is going to be “extremely difficult”.