Australia and Japan have rejected a call by U.S. President Donald Trump for warships to be sent to secure the Strait of Hormuz, confirming Monday they do not plan to join military operations in the contested zone.
France and the UK have already ruled out a naval contribution to the region.
Australian Transport Minister Catherine King told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) that Canberra had no plans to deploy naval vessels to the strait. Such an operation “is not among the contributions that Australia is planning at the moment,” she made clear.
Australia has sent air support however.
In Tokyo, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjirō Koizumi told parliament Japan does not intend to launch a maritime security mission in response to U.S. requests, saying current circumstances “do not warrant military participation from Japan.”
AFP reports Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi added she had not received a request from Trump.
“The question is what Japan should do on our own initiative and what’s possible within our legal framework, rather than what’s requested by the United States,” she told parliament. “We have asked various sections of various ministries to discuss this.”
Any maritime security operation would be “extremely difficult legally” she added, even as Operation Epic Fury continues to decimate any and all remaining warships belonging to Iran’s depleted navy.
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Sending its Self-Defense Forces abroad is politically sensitive in officially pacifist Japan, as many voters support the war-renouncing 1947 constitution.
Iran has effectively closed the strait in retaliation for the U.S.-Israeli actions against Tehran.
Trump announced Saturday “many countries” will be dispatching warships to patrol the Strait of Hormuz amid the ongoing conflict with Iran, suggesting it is “still easy” for its military to inflict damage on vessels there “no matter how badly defeated they are,” as Breitbart News reported.
Some 20 percent of the world’s oil — around 20 million barrels per day — normally travels in tankers through the narrow corridor between Iran in the north and Oman and the United Arab Emirates in the south.
Those transits have all but stopped as the result of a number of ships being attacked in the region since Operation Epic Fury began on February 28.
