Donald Trump is begging the world to help him clean up his own mess in Iran, and the world is leaving him on read.
Britain, Australia, France, Japan, and South Korea have all refused or signaled reluctance to send warships to help the United States reopen the Strait of Hormuz, the critical trade chokepoint that Iran shut down on March 2 after Trump launched his war.
That’s not a coalition of the willing. That’s an intervention’s worth of countries telling the president to handle his own disaster.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said flatly that he would not be sending warships, according to The Telegraph. UK Energy Minister Ed Miliband said the government was looking at “any options” but that de-escalation was the “best and simplest way” to restart shipping — diplomatic speak for “we’re not joining your war.”
Australia said the same thing. A government official told Reuters on Sunday that no naval ships would be sent to assist at the strait.
Britain and Australia are the only countries besides the U.S. that have combat-ready Tomahawk cruise missiles. They are, in theory, exactly who you’d call if you needed help projecting naval power in a contested waterway. And they both said no.
Then there’s France, whose official Foreign Office account posted a response on Twitter that was practically dripping with contempt: “No. The aircraft carrier strike group remains in the Eastern Mediterranean. France’s posture is unchanged: Defensive. Protective. Stop the scaremongering.”
“Stop the scaremongering” — from an allied government, on a public platform, directed at the President of the United States. That’s not diplomacy. That’s a dressing-down.
Trump, naturally, responded to all of this by posting on Truth Social on Saturday, claiming America has already “beaten and completely decimated Iran” while simultaneously admitting Iran can still “send a drone or two, drop a mine, or deliver a close range missile” along the strait. The Iranian military is apparently both totally destroyed and a significant ongoing threat — a neat trick if you can pull it off.
“Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected by this artificial constraint, will send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a Nation that has been totally decapitated,” Trump wrote.
He’s literally asking China to bail him out. China.
Meanwhile, the daily shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has collapsed from an average of 60 ships per day to just two, according to hormuzstraitmonitor.com. That’s a 97 percent drop in one of the most important trade corridors on earth.
Americans are paying for it right now. The average price of a gallon of gas has spiked to $3.70, up more than 22 percent from $2.94 just a month ago. That’s Trump’s war tax, paid at the pump, by every working person who has to drive to their job.
Since U.S. and Israeli forces began strikes on Iran late last month, 13 American service members have been killed. Over 1,400 people have been killed and more than 18,000 injured in Iran, according to Al Jazeera’s latest figures.
Thirteen dead Americans. Allies refusing to help. Gas prices through the roof. A strait that carries a massive share of global oil completely choked off. And the president is on Truth Social doing what he does best: declaring victory and begging for help in the same breath.
The so-called leader of the free world started a war, got his allies killed, crashed shipping through a critical waterway, sent gas prices soaring, and now can’t get a single major ally to return his calls.
France told him to stop scaremongering. Britain said no. Australia said no.
Thirteen American service members are dead, and the price of gas is $3.70 a gallon.