The United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan made a call for international law to be observed in the Gulf as they announced joint efforts to reopen the Straits of Hormuz are in the “preparatory planning” stage.
A coalition of Western nations have expressed their “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait”. While the joint statement from the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Japan is couched in the least committal language possible, it is a notable change of direction after a week of the leaders of those same nations rebuffing calls from the United States to rally around the flag and ensure freedom of navigation in one of the world’s most strategic and contested waterways for their own good.
Indeed, the statement follows major criticism of the government and leadership of UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, which President Trump castigated for failing to pursue its own national interest as well as not honouring its allies, while calling him out personally for being indecisive and hidebound. It also lands just as Japan’s Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae meets President Trump for talks in Washington, which were anticipated to be “difficult” for Japan after the country failed to heed Trump’s call for aid.
Signal that these six nations are moving towards action or not, the statement makes clear they are only in the “prepatory planning” stage to make “appropriate efforts” to reopen the Straits of Hormuz in the future. No date was placed on that, conditions for deployment, or what level of commitment this might entail was specified.
Instead, the majority of the statement was a defence of international law. While only Iran’s behaviour was called out by name, sections of the statement were sufficiently vague to imply the group of nations were calling on the U.S. and Israel to stop striking civilian targets such as “oil and gas installations”. That too came just hours after the world’s largest gas field at South Pars in Iran was struck in what the U.S. called an Israeli strike undertaken without the permission of Washington.
The group of nations said of Iran in their statement that they:
…condemn in the strongest terms recent attacks by Iran on unarmed commercial vessels in the Gulf, attacks on civilian infrastructure including oil and gas installations, and the de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz by Iranian forces. We call on Iran to cease immediately its threats, laying of mines, drone and missile attacks and other attempts to block the Strait to commercial shipping…
They called on Iran to comply with the orders of the United Nations Security Council and through the statement appealed to international law several times. They said:
We call for an immediate comprehensive moratorium on attacks on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas installations… We call on all states to respect international law and uphold the fundamental principles of international prosperity and security.
International law is a massive preoccupation for British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, a former human rights lawyer, and he has made explicit that he is opposed to any involvement in keeping the sea lanes of communication through which the lifeblood of the global economy flows unless it can be clearly proved action is compatible with international law. As reported this week, Sir Keir addressed the country to state this, asserting the government was not yet “at the point of decisions” on whether to use the Royal Navy to keep trade flowing because he wasn’t yet confident there is a “proper, thought-through plan” or “legal basis”.
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