The Memo: Allies balk at Trump’s call for help on Strait of Hormuz

President Trump is seeking help to reopen the crucial Strait of Hormuz — but the responses he’s getting from traditional U.S. allies mostly range from tepid noncommittal to outright refusal.

The diplomatic battle has cast a new shadow on Trump’s attack on Iran, which has been unpopular with the American public from the outset. U.S. military superiority over Iran has never been in doubt, but the Islamic Republic has proven more resilient so far than some expected, and a spike in oil prices has disconcerted even some Trump allies.

The president has reacted with a mixture of defensiveness and defiance.

On Monday, speaking from the East Room of the White House, Trump insisted that some nations were enthusiastic about coming to the aid of the U.S.

Asked to name some of the willing countries, Trump responded that he would “rather not say yet.”

He noted that some nations were less enthusiastic than others, and clearly placed the United Kingdom in this camp. Trump jabbed at British Prime Minister Keir Starmer several times during his remarks.

Yet even as Trump insisted that an alliance of some kind was coalescing, he also asserted that American might was so overpowering as to make assistance from other nations unnecessary.

“We don’t need anybody,” he said. “We’re the strongest nation in the world.”

Trump said that his requests for assistance were in part merely a test to “find out how they react — because I’ve been saying for years that if we ever did need them, they won’t be there.”

Elsewhere in his remarks, he insisted that Iran’s forces, against whom the U.S. and Israel launched an attack on Feb. 28, had been “literally obliterated.” He also threatened the Islamic Republic that any attempt to lay mines in the Strait of Hormuz would be not merely “a big negative” but “a form of suicide.”

The facts on the ground are more complicated, however.

Even as Iran has gotten strafed by American and Israeli munitions, its most effective retaliatory actions have been in striking out at other oil-producing nations in the Gulf, and effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz.

The shipping channel, off Iran’s southern coast, is normally a transit route for roughly one-fifth of the world’s oil. The rise in oil prices is increasing gas prices at the pump for Americans.

The political peril for Trump is obvious. Trump’s GOP colleagues are looking nervously down the track at midterm elections, which are now less than eight months away.

Meanwhile, there is a palpable lack of enthusiasm on the other side of the Atlantic for getting involved in a Middle Eastern conflict at Trump’s behest. In Britain and continental Europe, that’s partly because of a generalized sense of distaste for Trump’s worldview, his belligerent rhetoric and his tendency to float antagonistic ideas such as the U.S. seizing control of Greenland.

“Mainly, he has built up no credit in the credit bank,” Jonathan Freedland, a prominent columnist for The Guardian in the U.K., told this column. “He has spent the last few months insulting Europeans — talking about ‘civilizational erasure’ and so on — so he should not be surprised about their reluctance to dig him out of a hole of his own making.”

Freedland asserted that Starmer would face serious backlash from the British electorate if he joined as a “protagonist” in the war on Iran.

The prime minister “would be in grave political trouble. … He would pay a very big price,” Freedland said.

A similar lack of enthusiasm has been evinced by important voices elsewhere in the world of European politics.

“ This is not our war ,” Germany’s defense minister, Boris Pistorius, said. “We have not started it.”

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s most senior foreign policy figure, also said Monday there was “no appetite” among the foreign ministers of the bloc’s member states for expanding an EU mission into the Strait of Hormuz.

To be sure, the reluctance of traditional U.S. allies to accede to Trump’s demands does not doom the president to failure. It is entirely plausible that U.S. and Israeli attacks could sap Iran’s ability to restrict shipping traffic through the narrow body of water. It remains possible, too, that the Islamic Republic itself could collapse.

In either scenario, Trump’s prediction that oil prices would reverse their climb would stand a strong chance of coming true — and he could claim a broader vindication for the military operation.

But, for now, the resistance being shown from Europe could hardly be plainer.

“We will not participate in ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz by military means,” German Chancellor Friedrich Merz posted on social media. “The war in the Middle East is not a matter for NATO. Therefore, Germany will also not become involved militarily.”

Comments like that underline just how much the attack on Iran rests entirely with Trump — with help from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“This war has international consequences but not an international coalition,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of State during the Obama administration and the author of The Briefing Book on Substack. “The result is that we, plus Israel, chose the action but the rest of the world is looking and saying, ‘It is your responsibility.’”

Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist who is critical of Trump, said that he hears similar dismay even among conservative groups outside the United States.

“My conservative friends [overseas] don’t see this in a partisan sense. They see the United States acting unilaterally, and that is not a good approach,” Tyler said. “To get the most of what you want, you would want to involve our allies and leverage our alliances. He hasn’t really demonstrated any interest in that.”

Trump will, no doubt, continue on his own way. But nations elsewhere in the world are reminding him that they have their own national and political interests, too.

The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.

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