Trump Pressures NATO, China Over Iran’s Closure Of Key Waterway

President Donald Trump urged NATO partners and China to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical conduit for crude that Iran has effectively closed, as major economic players began releasing oil reserves on Monday to ward off supply disruptions.

Global oil prices have surged by 40 to 50 percent after Iran choked off the waterway and attacked energy and shipping industry targets in the Gulf in retaliation for the US-Israeli war against the Islamic republic.

Crude prices were hovering around $100 on Monday as the Middle East war entered its third week, with Israel saying it still has “thousands of targets in Iran”, where it was also “identifying new targets every day”.

Trump said the United States was in discussions with Iran but that Tehran was not ready for a deal to end the war, although the Islamic republic’s foreign minister had earlier denied any talks with Washington.

“I don’t think they’re ready. But they are getting pretty close,” Trump said.

The US president had called on countries including China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain at the weekend to send ships to escort tankers through the strait.

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday. Unlike the United States, Europe and China are heavily dependent on the Gulf for oil imports.

Trump threatened to delay a planned summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping later this month if Beijing does not assist with reopening the strait.

He also warned that no response or a negative reply to his request would be “very bad for the future of NATO”.

But Tokyo and Canberra both said they were not planning deployments.

- Iran warning -
Trump’s comments came after Iran warned other countries against getting involved in the war, which has spread across the Middle East.

In a phone conversation with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, Tehran’s top diplomat Abbas Araghchi called on other countries to “refrain from any action that could lead to escalation and expansion of the conflict”.

Arguing that the US security umbrella in the region was “inviting rather than deterring trouble”, Araghchi on X urged neighbouring countries “to expel foreign aggressors”.

Iran has launched waves of attacks on countries in the Middle East that host US forces, and Italy’s military said a drone attack at Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait -- which hosts both US and Italian forces -- destroyed an unmanned aircraft belonging to Italy but caused no casualties.

Italy’s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, sought to play down the attack -- the second on an Italian base in the Middle East this week -- insisting: “We are not at war with anyone.”

Iraqi authorities meanwhile said rockets wounded five people at Baghdad’s airport, which houses a US diplomatic facility, while Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said about 700 missiles and 3,600 drones had been fired at US and Israeli targets so far.

Saudi Arabia intercepted more than 60 drones since midnight, according to a tally of defence ministry figures released on Monday, while Dubai airport suspended flights briefly after a “drone-related incident” sparked a fire nearby.

And French President Emmanuel Macron told Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian it was “unacceptable” to target French interests after an Iranian-designed drone killed a French soldier in Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

The war has also spread to Lebanon, where Israel launched a new strike on Beirut’s southern suburbs late on Sunday.

- Energy markets -
On the economic front, the International Energy Agency said members will begin releasing 400 million barrels of oil from their strategic reserves, with Asia Oceania nations to make stocks available immediately, and Europe and the Americas follow in the weeks to come.

Japan, which depends on the Middle East for 95 percent of its oil imports, said Monday in a notice in its official government gazette that the level of oil reserves in the country “is being lowered”.

The issuance of the notice compels managers of oil reserves to release part of their stockpile to meet the new standard.

The blockade of Hormuz has been felt across the globe, with Australia officials urging the public against price-gouging and panic buying as prices soar, while India restaurants were forced to adapt their menus to save cooking gas.

On the outskirts of Sydney, landscaper Emma Futterleib, who drives up to 500 km a week, told AFP “there’s definitely some penny pinching going on”.

“It hurts the budget, that’s for sure,” she said, adding she was “trying to be a bit careful on how much we are spending on groceries.”

In Tehran, some residents sought to restore some normalcy at the weekend compared to the start of the war on February 28.

Traffic was busier than last week and some cafes and restaurants had reopened, as had more than a third of stalls in the Tajrish bazaar, a popular shopping hub, with Nowruz, the Persian New Year, just days away.

Some shoppers queued at ATMs to withdraw cash. Online operations at Bank Melli, one of the country’s largest, had been paralysed in recent days.

It was a similar story outside the capital. In an interview from Tonekabon, a city in Mazandaran province on the Caspian Sea, 49-year-old Ali told AFP that shops were open and crowded despite steep price rises.

“Only the main square is closed every night, and government demonstrations take place,” he said, adding that only Iran’s domestic intranet was working, without outside connections.

More than 1,200 people have been killed by US and Israeli strikes, according to Iranian health ministry figures that could not be independently verified.

The UN refugee agency says up to 3.2 million people have been displaced in Iran.
-AFP