Donald Trump has expressed frustration over a lack of military assistance from allies, but European leaders are reluctant to join a conflict he started without consulting them.
The US President has long been sceptical about the value of alliances. Two weeks into his war with Iran, he was seeking to build one on Tuesday (local time).
Faced with Tehran’s successful effort to cut off the flow of oil and gas tankers through a vital shipping choke point, Trump has importuned a sweep of nations to help secure the Strait of Hormuz. He has blasted Britain, Germany, Japan, South Korea and others for their reluctance.
And he has revived his long-standing complaints about the Nato alliance, musing that he could rethink the US relationship with allies without congressional approval.
But days of demands appear to have yielded little concrete assistance, with countries reluctant to join a conflict Trump unleashed without their input, and one that is deeply unpopular in their countries.
European nations are still reeling from Trump’s January efforts to wrest Greenland from Danish control – an experience some of them feared would involve a US military operation – and Trump is increasingly toxic among European voters.
The US President views it differently, saying that the United States came to Europe’s aid when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 but that Europeans are leaving Washington in the lurch in an energy crisis in the Gulf.
“We helped with Ukraine, and they don’t help with Iran,” Trump said on Tuesday (local time), speaking in the Oval Office alongside Irish Prime Minister Micheál Martin. “You would have thought they would have said, ‘We’d love to send a couple of minesweepers’. It’s not a big deal. It doesn’t cost very much money. But they didn’t do that. So, you know, it, I think it’s very unfair to the United States, not to me but to the United States.”
Asked whether he was rethinking the US relationship with Nato, Trump did not directly answer, saying only that he would not need congressional approval, something he has noted previously when discussing a possible pullout from the alliance, which would effectively collapse the core of Europe’s post-World War II security umbrella.
Overhauling relations with Nato is “certainly something that we should think about”, Trump said.
Iran’s efforts to attack ships going through the Strait of Hormuz have sent global energy prices skyrocketing and shipments of oil, gas and fertiliser have largely ground to a halt.
In the United States, gasoline is 30% more expensive than it was a month ago – a significant political threat to Trump and Republicans before the midterm elections.
The White House has said that the higher prices are a temporary effect of what Trump has called the “excursion” and that ultimately, they will be lower than they were before the war once Iranian oil is again flowing to world markets.
In Europe, Washington’s traditional allies are weathering not only a surge in global oil prices but also a rise in the price of natural gas that the United States, as the world’s largest producer, hasn’t experienced. The spike in energy costs threatens to slow economic growth and hike prices in Europe more sharply than in the US.
Still, European leaders are cautious about joining a fight that they did not seek. And the crisis spreading across the Middle East is also shaping up to be a new source of tension in a rocky transatlantic relationship.
“We’re beginning to see the effects of a real break of trust across the Atlantic,” Nathalie Tocci, the director of the Rome-based Institute for International Affairs, said.
“I mean, why on earth would Europeans do this, right?” she said. “We’re talking about a President that has withdrawn military assistance from Ukraine, that has imposed tariffs on Europe, that has threatened a European country with annexation.”
It is not the first time that a US war of choice in the Middle East has triggered transatlantic tensions. French and German opposition to President George W. Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq set off denunciations of “Old Europe” by Bush allies and an effort to rename french fries as “freedom fries”. But Bush did not try to pressure Europe by threatening to pull out of Nato and several eastern European countries – with Britain – also joined the war.
Bush also spent months before the invasion trying to build the case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a global security threat. So did his father, President George H.W. Bush, before the 1991 Gulf War.
“Bush 41 spent four months putting together a coalition after Saddam invaded Kuwait. It was a regional strategy with regional partners. It was an international strategy,” Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who was involved in the earlier Bush’s efforts, said. “It was a co-ordinated effort to turn the war into Saddam versus the world, and it was successful.”
Now, even with Iran’s violent crackdown on its citizens, “we are alone in terms of any sort of political and economic structured alliance to do anything about it”, Miller said. He said that he didn’t think US allies would be eager to join the effort in the strait, even if Trump had built the case beforehand. “They do not want a conflict with Iran,” Miller said.
The Iraq War also became a lesson on the political risk of backing American adventurism. Ultimately, it left a sense across Europe that the 2003 US invasion yielded a long, bloody and war under false pretences. European involvement there and in Afghanistan is widely viewed as a mistake and has made it complicated for European leaders to join America in another Middle East war, especially led by a President they clash with often.
The European pushback to Trump’s demands highlights frustrations over the global ambitions of an unfettered White House and an open-ended, expanding conflict.
“We are not party to the conflict and so France would never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context,” French President Macron told a cabinet meeting on Tuesday (local time).
“Once the core of the bombing stops,” however, France is ready “to assume responsibility” with others and help escort tankers, he added. Macron, who has deployed warships to the Mediterranean to defend French assets, has said France would help mobilise a coalition to secure shipping lanes after a de-escalation with Iran.
Two European officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter, said France has opened talks with Tehran about the passage of ships, but it was not clear whether Iran’s battered leadership would be responsive or be convinced that the Europeans were truly acting independently of Washington, their most powerful ally.
Some European nations would be open to sending ships for de-mining and deterrence if there is an off-ramp in the war or a deal on the Strait of Hormuz, but “nobody wants to go in while the war is raging”, one of the officials said.
“While taking the necessary action to defend ourselves and our allies, we will not be drawn into the wider war,” British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said on Monday (local time).
The complicated response in Europe to Trump’s call reflects the continent’s own security dynamics. Countries more accustomed to projecting global power – Britain and France – have seemed more willing to join in securing the strait at a later stage.
Other European governments were more direct in their objections to any involvement that risks making their countries a target of Iranian counter-attacks, while their companies and consumers are feeling the spike in energy prices. Several European officials outright rebuffed Trump’s demands.
“This is not Europe’s war,” European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said after foreign ministers of the bloc’s 27 nations convened in Brussels on Monday to discuss Europe’s response to the war. Kallas said the Europeans were focused on “diplomatic outreach” for a negotiated solution.
German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius, whose country had been more supportive of the war than others, said on Monday (local time) there would be “no military participation” by Berlin.
“What does ... Donald Trump expect,” Pistorius asked, “from one or two handfuls of European frigates in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful American Navy cannot accomplish?”
Tehran has pledged to keep retaliating against US and Israeli attacks and has said the Strait of Hormuz would stay closed to Iran’s “enemies”.
Even if European leaders could reach some form of diplomatic understanding with Iran about shipping routes, that is unlikely to restore traffic without a detente in the fighting between the United States, Israel and Iran that could reassure shipping companies, insurers and crews, European Union (EU) officials said.
The EU has undertaken a relatively small naval operation since 2024 to help protect shipping lanes in the Red Sea, which some officials have suggested could be reinforced and expanded to the Strait of Hormuz. But there is little appetite for that without a ceasefire.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said on Monday (local time) that assistance in the strait would “mean taking a step forward in involvement” that Italy was unwilling to take. Her Government is struggling to defend its close ties to Trump as the war enters its third week.
While European officials have sought to convey that the US war against Tehran falls out of Nato’s remit, that has done little to curb Trump’s irritation with others in the transatlantic military alliance.
Trump’s call for other countries to help secure the Strait of Hormuz also puts US allies in Asia, which are heavily dependent on oil shipments from the Middle East, in a bind.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who will meet Trump in Washington on Thursday, said on Monday (local time) that Tokyo is not currently planning to deploy ships to escort vessels.
Japan’s post-war constitution restricts its military operations overseas. While Trump has urged American partners to provide minesweepers, Takaichi had ruled out the possibility of sending forces for de-mining into a conflict zone before there is a ceasefire.
Trump’s call for China to help secure the strait is also unlikely, some analysts and former diplomats said.
Beijing relies on the strait for its energy supply. But China is not willing to take actions that could position Iran, its friend, as an enemy, Wang Yiwei, a former diplomat and a council member in the state-affiliated Chinese People’s Institute of Foreign Affairs, said.
“As for the ask over Hormuz, there is simply no way China will join, because not even the EU is doing it,” Wang said.
Sign up to Herald Premium Editor’s Picks, delivered straight to your inbox every Friday. Editor-in-Chief Murray Kirkness picks the week’s best features, interviews and investigations. Sign up for Herald Premium here.