Trump Urges Allies to Send Warships to Hormuz as Iran Threatens Escalation
Gulf states reported new missile and drone attacks Sunday after Tehran threatened to widen its campaign and called for the evacuation of three major ports in the United Arab Emirates as Iranian strikes there progress into their third week.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had carried out missile and drone strikes on targets in “Israel” and three U.S. bases in the region, calling the attacks the first round of retaliation for workers killed in Iran’s industrial areas.
Saudi Arabia intercepted and destroyed 10 drones in Riyadh and the east, the defense ministry said. The IRGC said they no had connection to the attack, semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Meanwhile, as global anxiety soars over oil prices and supplies, U.S. President Donald Trump said Saturday that he hopes China, France, Japan, South Korea, the U.K. and others send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz “open and safe.” Britain in response said it was discussing with allies a “range of options” to secure shipping.
Takayuki Kobayashi, Japan’s ruling party policy chief, declined to rule out the possibility, but told public broadcaster NHK that “the (legal) threshold is very high.”
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, in a social media post, urged neighbors to “expel foreign aggressors” and described Trump’s call as “begging.”
It is noteworthy that Tehran’s ability to halt shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil passes, poses a difficult problem for the U.S. and its allies. Energy prices are soaring as the war causes the biggest-ever disruption in oil supply, and the energy crisis looked set to continue.
