European leaders continued their talks on the Iran war on Friday, this time considering a future mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which saw President Trump announce the strategic waterway open as the group spoke in Paris.
Britain’s Sir Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Germany’s Fredrich Merz, and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni met in Paris on Friday to host a virtual conference with 50 countries discuss a theoretical future military deployment to the Persian Gulf to ensure freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic bottleneck through which a fifth of global seaborne oil is traded in normal times. Yet the wind was taken out of the mega-conference’s sails, somewhat, when U.S. President Donald Trump announced he’d already reopened the Strait while the conference was ongoing.
Starmer moved to recover the initiative after the meeting broke, saying “We welcome the announcement that was made during our meeting”, but stating “we” not need to “make sure that that is both a lasting and a workable proposal”. President Trump having come to an understanding with Tehran “if anything” proves the need for Europe to talk about potentially deploying their navies one day, he said.
The language from the European leaders remained cautious. As noted by the Associated Press, Macron said after the meeting that talking about the Strait would continue, and that they had another meeting planned for next week. Starmer said any mission would be “strictly peaceful and defensive, as a mission to reassure commercial shipping and support mine clearance” and emphasised this mission would only begin “as soon as conditions allow”.
Starmer and his European colleagues have been clear this means well after the war is over and there is no longer any threat to their navies, somewhat leaving the question open over what the mission actually hopes to achieve.
U.S. President Donald Trump pointed to this contradiction of a peacekeeping mission that would only deploy to a peaceful Middle East. He wrote on Friday: “Now that the Hormuz Strait situation is over, I received a call from NATO asking if we would need some help. I TOLD THEM TO STAY AWAY, UNLESS THEY JUST WANT TO LOAD UP THEIR SHIPS WITH OIL. They were useless when needed, a Paper Tiger!”.
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