By John Haughey
Contributing Writer
President Donald Trump said Monday that several nations will send warships to join the United States Navy in escorting commercial ships through the Strait of Hormuz but expressed disappointment that several key NATO “big boys,” notably the United Kingdom and Germany, have not responded to his call for a joint operation.
“Numerous countries have told me they’re on the way,” he said at a Trump-Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts luncheon. ”Some are very enthusiastic about it. Some are in countries that we’ve helped for many, many years.”
The president said UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer denied his request for the British to send two aircraft carriers to the Arabian Sea or eastern Mediterranean.
French President Emmanuel Macron has been more cooperative, he said, dispatching an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean, which allowed the USS Gerald Ford to join the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea to focus on the strait.
“I have spoken to him. He’s been, on a scale of zero to 10, I’d say he’s been an eight,” Trump said.
Asked what countries have committed ships, the president said, “I’d rather not say yet, but we’ll be announcing” details soon.
“I have to tell you, we have some that are really enthusiastic. They’re coming already. They’ve already started to get there. You know, takes a little while to get there.”
The bottom line, he said, is the United States could do it itself.
“We don’t need anybody. We’re the strongest nation in the world,“ Trump said. ”We have the strongest military by far in the world. But it’s interesting. I’m almost doing it in some cases, not because we need them, but because I want to find out how they react. I’ve been saying for years that if we ever did need them, they won’t be there, not all of them, but they won’t be there.”
Trump said on Sunday that he had asked seven countries that depend heavily on the waterway to help secure it, after earlier naming China, France, Japan, South Korea and Britain as nations he hoped would deploy ships to augment U.S. forces in the Arabian Sea.
The president said the United States imports little crude oil from the Persian Gulf. The nations he requested send warships to police the waterway “get much more” of their oil from the region.
Japan gets 95%, China gets 90%, South Korea 35%, and “many of the Europeans get quite a bit,” Trump said. “So we want them to come and help us with the trade.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is scheduled to visit Washington to meet with Trump on Thursday.
Germany, Spain and Italy are among NATO allies that immediately rebuffed the president’s call for assistance in keeping the strait open.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said more warships won’t secure the strait, questioning what “a handful or two handfuls of European frigates” could do “that the powerful U.S. Navy cannot do?”
“Neither the United States nor Israel consulted us before the war, and … Washington explicitly stated at the outset of the war that European assistance was neither necessary nor desired,” German government spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said Monday in Berlin.
“This is not our war. We have not started it.”
“Italy is not at war with anyone and sending military ships in a war zone would mean entering the war,” Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvin told reporters Monday in Milan.
Denmark and the UK have not denied Trump’s request. Both nations said they are considering participating in a joint operation in the Arabia Sea. But the president criticized the hesitancy in Britain’s response.
Trump said Starmer “yesterday told me ‘I’m meeting with my team’ to make a [decision] and I said, ‘You don’t need to meet with the team. You’re the prime minister. You can make your own. Why do you have to meet with your team to find out whether or not you’re going to send some mine-sweepers to us or to send boats?’”
