Trump Hunts for Allies to Help Reopen the Strait of Hormuz

By Noah Rothman

Monday, March 16, 2026

 

Typically, a president would assemble an international coalition of the willing, so to speak, before the outset of a fraught military campaign against a hostile adversary, not after. That is not this president’s style. But for all his willingness to test the staid parameters of conventional wisdom in Washington, Donald Trump seems to be learning that gratuitously antagonizing your allies can invite undesirable consequences.

 

As is his habit, the president is soliciting America’s allies’ assistance in opening the Strait of Hormuz to commercial traffic in the most unnecessarily aggressive way possible.

 

“We have a thing called NATO,” Trump told the Financial Times over the weekend. “We’ve been very sweet.” Trump contended that the United States has provided for Europe — specifically, Europe’s collective efforts to provide for Ukraine’s defense against a Russian onslaught. “Now we’ll see if they help us,” he added.

 

“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” the president declared. “If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”

 

America’s European allies have responded coolly to the president’s overtures. Some have flatly insisted that they want no part of the U.S.-Israel campaign against the Islamic Republic. Others, like Keir Starmer’s U.K., are straddling the fence and weighing their options.

 

“It is in our interest to keep the Strait of Hormuz open, and that’s why we are also discussing what we can do in this regard from the European side,” European Commission Vice President Kaja Kallas said on Monday. She even floated a version of the “Black Sea ​Initiative” to unblock the Strait, reprising the tactics that helped Ukraine export its grain while also disabling much of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. But the fact that she is in talks with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres about such an initiative should lead observers to conclude that it’s going nowhere fast.

 

Beyond Europe, Trump has also leaned hard on the nations in Iran’s region to take ownership of their own security. “I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory, because it is their own territory,” Trump said to reporters aboard Air Force One of the countries Iran has attacked since the outset of this conflict (including Oman, Saudi Arabia,  Jordan, Cyprus, Turkey, Azerbaijan, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq, Kuwait, and Bahrain). While reportedly supportive of the war’s goal of neutralizing Iran’s power projection capabilities, these states are committed only to maintaining the defensive posture they have assumed since the war’s outset.

 

Trump has also called on Asia — America’s allies and adversaries alike — to take on the burden of helping to “police” the Strait. Japan is playing coy, citing the “high hurdles” to overcome in its pacifist constitution. South Korea “takes note” of Trump’s request, promising only that it “will closely coordinate and carefully review” it. Even China, a nominal partner in an international coalition aimed at containing Islamist piracy in the region, said only that its participation in any such operation would have to be discussed at a highly anticipated April summit between Trump and Xi Jinping.

 

This flurry of diplomatic activity contributes to the impression promulgated implicitly by the press that the Trump administration, in CNN’s language, “did not plan for the possibility of Iran closing the strait in response to strikes.” In the days since that report was published, dozens of military analysts have observed how unlikely it was that administration or Pentagon officials simply overlooked what was widely known to be the central pillar of Iran’s self-preservation strategy. But the disruptions associated with conflict in the Persian Gulf, however anticipated they may have been, are still painful.

 

The administration has sought to calm the nerves frayed by the market’s gyrations over the last three weeks, insisting that the Strait could not be unblocked and escort missions undertaken before Iran’s coastal power-projection capabilities had been properly degraded. But the markets are spooking everyone, including the president, and his administration wants relief sooner rather than later.

 

And yet, those who anticipated that a total shutdown of traffic on the Strait would be short lived, if Iran pulled the trigger on that option at all, did so with the understanding that Iran could only hold out for so long — both militarily and economically, insofar as cutting off traffic in the Strait also imperils Iran’s own economic security. Over the weekend, what remains of Iran’s political representatives essentially acknowledged as much.

 

“As a matter of fact, the Strait of Hormuz is open,” Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told MS NOW’s reporters. “It is only closed to the tankers and ships belong[ing] to our enemies, to those who are attacking us and their allies. Others are free to pass.” Even if shipping interests prefer not to transit the strait, “this has nothing to do with us.” That’s Araghchi’s way of saying that the Strait is impassible not because its waterways are mined and Iran’s drone and missile capabilities are prohibitively dangerous, but, rather, because traversing the Strait is not fully insured.

 

In this light, Trump’s global outreach makes sense. Whether the international community likes it or not, there will be no going back to a post-war world. Iran is no longer a potential threat to the exploration, exploitation, and shipping of commodities through the Strait. It is an active one that the globe — not just America and Israel — will have to contain for however long the Islamic Republic has left. That will be a commercial enterprise as well as a military venture, and the sooner the rest of the world acknowledges its role, the better.

 

Consternation in foreign capitals over this new set of unanticipated conditions is understandable. So, too, is the dearth of goodwill in places like Europe toward an administration that has been, at the very least, less than cordial toward the Atlantic Alliance and its member states. But whatever hard feelings exist between the Trump White House and America’s allies, events should compel everyone to paper over those disagreements. There’s a war to win, and the whole world has a stake in it — whether they like it or not.