Why is Trump arm-twisting NATO nations into clearing his Iran mess?

LONDON – US President Donald Trump’s warning that NATO faces a “very bad future” unless its member states help the US open the Strait of Hormuz to oil shipments confirms Europe’s worst nightmare: that, after launching the offensive against Iran without consulting his allies, Mr Trump will then turn to the Europeans to help Washington deal with the consequences of his war.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Mr Trump told London’s Financial Times daily, arguing that, unlike the US, Europe is heavily dependent on oil from the Gulf.

“If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO,” the US President added.

Mr Trump’s warning to the Europeans came after he launched a similar appeal to Australia, China, Japan and South Korea to join in what he referred to as a “team effort” to open the strait, through which 20 per cent of the world’s oil transits.

But his explicit warning to NATO has raised the political stakes, just as the Europeans have to cope with Russia’s continued invasion of Ukraine.

Turning down Mr Trump’s appeal for assistance risks upending all of Europe’s security arrangements. Yet, contributing to what is widely perceived in Europe as an illegal and unprovoked war is hardly appealing to European governments.

It is no wonder, therefore, that most European leaders are now trying to buy time by ordering their military commanders to hold private talks with the US on what can be done to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, in the hope that a ceasefire agreement could emerge before any deployment is required.

A predictable crisis

Every US military plan for a potential confrontation with Iran included the scenario that Iran would block the strait.

Western military analysts debated whether a clash over the strait would come early in a conflict, or whether the Iranian regime would activate this option only after other defences failed.

Still, all security analysts and Gulf specialists agreed that the closure of the strait remains one of Iran’s most potent weapons.

It is therefore certain that, in preparing for the current military offensive, President Trump was alerted to this danger. The reason the US was still caught unprepared was that Mr Trump believed that the Iranians were going to be a pushover, and that the early destruction of the Iranian navy would preclude the closure of the strait.

Iran’s navy was duly destroyed. Still, the Strait of Hormuz can be effectively closed with mere words rather than deeds or military hardware. It was enough for the Iranians to threaten to fire drones on oil tankers passing through or hint that the strait’s waters are mined for traffic to grind to a halt and global oil prices to spiral.

Again, this is something that security experts warned about for decades. But Mr Trump is not famous for listening to experts.

Escalate or escalate: US options

Short of pulling the plug on the current war or negotiating what for the US would be a humiliating political deal with Iran, Mr Trump is confronted with two military choices, and both entail getting sucked even deeper into the conflict.

The first option consists of a US threat that, if Iran continues to block international oil and gas trade through the strait, its entire oil industry and main source of revenue could be destroyed.

That is why the US, on March 14, bombed Kharg Island, farther north in the Gulf. The island handles about 96 per cent of Iran’s crude exports, equivalent to roughly 1.54 million barrels out of a national total of about 1.6 million barrels per day.

The US air raids were directed exclusively at Iranian military installations on Kharg Island. But the threat was not subtle: Mr Trump warned that if there are any further disruptions to shipping through the strait, he “may have to reconsider” his decision to spare the Iranian oil installations.

The second option is to seize control of the strait, either by positioning US ships in the waterway or by landing US troops and occupying the Iranian shore of the strait.

The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier has moved from its original position in the eastern Mediterranean and is now sailing through the Red Sea en route to the Gulf. A further 2,500 US Marines have been sent from the Pacific to the Middle East to join perhaps another 7,000 others already in the region.

These measures are designed to provide Mr Trump with plenty of options to mount a limited ground offensive around the strait.

Yet both military options are fraught with grave dangers. Destroying Iran’s oil-exporting capacity does nothing to open the strait and would worsen global oil shortages. Occupying a strip of Iranian coastline facing the strait will be costly in human casualties. Either one of these military measures requires the US to remain in the region for months.

Plain sailing?

That is why the option of providing navy escorts for convoys of tankers through the strait remains appealing to Washington. This was successfully done before during the so-called Operation Earnest Will to protect navigation from Iranian attacks during the late 1980s. Convoys spread the risk and complicate Iranian decision-making. And, once operational, they are straightforward to run.

The snag is that the US Navy no longer has the lighter frigates, which were so useful for such operations. The US tried to replace the function of frigates with the Littoral Combat Ship programme, which failed to meet expectations.

And it simply does not have enough of the bigger Arleigh Burke-class destroyers near the Gulf to mount such convoys.

Hence Mr Trump’s global appeal.

The Europeans do have more of the lighter ships. Britain, France and Germany alone can muster at least 15 minehunters and minesweepers for such an operation. Although fairly substantial French naval assets are already deployed in the eastern Mediterranean, it will take time before a force able to protect convoys is assembled.

Such an operation will be deeply unpopular with European electorates.

Discussions between European and US military planners are continuing. Meanwhile, however, President Trump is rediscovering an old lesson: that while it is easy to start a war in the Middle East, it is far more difficult to end it.