Europe Is Looking for Its Own Hormuz Fix
The continent has relevant military strengths, but little appetite for fighting.
Just as a two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran kicked in last week, Europeans rushed to meet partners in the Persian Gulf in a scramble to find ways to secure the Strait of Hormuz. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer flew to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, while the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, arrived in Saudi Arabia and later visited Abu Dhabi.
“Our Governments will contribute to ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” noted a statement signed by representatives of several European countries plus Australia, Japan, and Canada. However, the statement did not specify what these contributions might be.
Just as a two-week cease-fire between the United States and Iran kicked in last week, Europeans rushed to meet partners in the Persian Gulf in a scramble to find ways to secure the Strait of Hormuz. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer flew to Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, while the European Union’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, arrived in Saudi Arabia and later visited Abu Dhabi.
“Our Governments will contribute to ensuring freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz,” noted a statement signed by representatives of several European countries plus Australia, Japan, and Canada. However, the statement did not specify what these contributions might be.
The Europeans are trying to gauge the Gulf’s expectations and build a consensus on a more sustainable way to secure the strait even as they fear that the cease-fire might be fragile. Over the weekend, talks held between the United States and Iran failed to deliver a deal. U.S. President Donald Trump later told Fox News that the United States will blockade Iranian ports—to ensure that Iran cannot charge a fee for ships that it lets through. But if Trump’s goal was to help secure global energy supplies or blunt Iranian diplomatic leverage, his planned blockade seemed likely to accomplish the opposite.
Even if the cease-fire holds, the Europeans fear that there is no solution to securing the strait unless Iran is brought onboard and agrees to a deconfliction mechanism—a diplomatic outcome that Europe has little ability to directly affect. The only alternative is becoming a party to the war and risking naval assets and troops to escort cargo vessels as well as deploying ground forces inside Iran over an extended period, which the Europeans have no appetite to do.
Various European leaders have tried to point out the pointlessness of military adventurism in the narrow waterway on the Iranian coast, where Iranian forces hold the advantage, but they have had little success. Trump seems to believe that reopening the strait will be an easy task, describing it as “a simple military maneuver” with little risk in a post on Truth Social on March 20.
He told Fox News that “numerous countries” are going to help the United States, without naming them, but added that “the U.K. and a couple of other countries are sending minesweepers.” The British government has not yet confirmed such involvement but has repeatedly said that it won’t be involved in the war.
Europeans do have relevant military capabilities but are already overstretched, as they must remain on guard in their own region against Russian military threats. And yet many European leaders continue to believe they could play a useful role in helping reopen the strait, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and gas tankers normally pass, given their expertise in building international coalitions and their law enforcement experience in the broader Middle East in dealing with piracy and the threat from the Houthis in the Red Sea.
France is taking the lead in building a coalition to guard the strait, and reports indicate that it has already deployed an aircraft carrier strike group, two helicopter carriers, and eight warships to the eastern Mediterranean. But Paris insists that these assets will only play a defensive role—under a U.N. framework and with Iran’s consent.
French President Emmanuel Macron has said that he is in talks with roughly 15 countries to secure the strait—presumably by deploying military assets—while trying to build a larger coalition of countries beyond Europe that includes India, Japan, and South Korea. Many Asian countries are more reliant on energy supplies from the strait than counterparts in Europe. Macron appears to be pushing for a global coalition of the willing with buy-in not just from the Gulf nations but also Asians. Any such coalition could be useful in finding a diplomatic pathway to defuse tensions in the future and trying to get Iran to play by the agreed rules.
“Macron suggested he would lead the European contribution to securing the strait, but it wouldn’t be immediate, and even when there is post-conflict stability, it would still be very risky,” Eva Pejsova, the Japan chair at the Center for Security, Diplomacy, and Strategy of the Brussels School of Governance, told Foreign Policy. “Europe could play the role of a convener,” she added. “It could set up a platform that allows sharing of maritime situational awareness in real time with the aim to deconflict.”
Europeans have largely opposed the war for multiple reasons, both moral and military. Firstly, they say that they were not consulted beforehand and are still unclear about its objectives. Secondly, the recent experiences of countries such as the United Kingdom and Spain have made them wary of the backlash of following the United States into war. Both countries sent troops alongside the Americans in Iraq and later suffered terrorist strikes—the London bombings in 2005 and Madrid train bombings in 2004 were claimed by terrorist groups in response to Britain and Spain’s troop deployment in the Iraq conflict.
“We cannot exclude the psychological wounds on both societies,” Grégoire Roos, the director of the Europe and Russia and Eurasia programs at Chatham House, told Foreign Policy. Previous venturesome U.S. endeavors in the region, he added, “came at a hefty price” for Spain and the United Kingdom.
There are also legal and more practical concerns. “How many ships would we need to escort cargo vessels via the strait safely? What’s the mandate of the naval troops? Is it defensive—only hitting missiles and drones fired at the vessel? Or offensive—also taking out Iranian launchpads on the coast?” asked Jürgen Ehle, a retired German rear admiral and former senior military advisor to the EU. He added, “All of this first needs to be decided, ideally by a U.N. mandate.”
Bence Nemeth, a senior lecturer in the defense studies department at King’s College London, said it was unrealistic for naval assets to escort thousands of cargo vessels in the middle of a conflict. And even in a post-conflict scenario, he argued, committing significant British assets to the Gulf would come at the expense of Britain’s primary security responsibilities in Europe.
“I think it would be very irresponsible to contribute any significant military assets toward the war in Iran, now that Europe is trying to rearm so it can deter Russia with significantly reduced U.S. support,” Nemeth said. “If Europe starts to divert capabilities to another theater now, it is giving up capabilities it might need for deterrence closer at home.”
The U.K. is already running short of ships to fulfill its NATO commitments. It has had to deploy a Type 45 destroyer, HMS Dragon, to the Mediterranean Sea after its air base in Cyprus came under an Iranian drone attack, while one is deployed in the High North and a third is in training following maintenance work.
That has left the U.K. unable to contribute to a NATO mission in the North Atlantic and Baltic Sea, now passed on to Germans. Germany will increase “its military presence in the North Atlantic under NATO,” the German Embassy in London posted on X. “As the UK deploys HMS Dragon to the eastern Mediterranean, German frigate Sachsen will take over from HMS Dragon.”
But both the U.K. and Germany are worried about deploying their few ships to the strait, which they fear might come at the cost of leaving their coasts undefended. Ehle said that Germany has three frigates with air defense capabilities, but diverting them could risk leaving the Baltic Sea at risk of Russian spying. Just late last week, British Defense Secretary John Healey said that three Russian submarines had conducted a “covert” operation in the Atlantic waters north of the United Kingdom.
Ehle said mine hunting was a German specialty and that the country has two minesweepers and 10 mine hunters, but neither could be deployed without an assurance of prolonged peace and a mandate. He directed me to German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s statement on Germany’s plans to contribute only “after a peace agreement is reached.” Merz said Trump was aware of Germany’s prerequisites—an international mandate, “preferably from the U.N. Security Council” and approval from the German parliament.
Ehle said the EU could potentially expand the existing maritime operation in the Red Sea, called Operation Aspides, which is deployed to deter the Houthis from attacking ships. Kallas has previously indicated that expansion of Aspides was on the table but ruled out by member states, at least as long as there was active fighting.
“It can be successful—even the U.S. Navy may participate as it did in the Red Sea,” Ehle said, referring to NATO-led Operation Sea Guardian—which NATO has described as “a non-Article 5 maritime security operation” to share maritime information, deter and counter terrorism, and enhance capacity building. Ehle added that a subsequent diplomatic deal between the United States and the Houthis was instrumental in reining in enemy strikes.
At the G-7 meeting in Paris on March 27, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio indicated that Washington was willing to participate in a mission to secure the strait and prevent Iran from charging a toll—which several reports indicate could be worth roughly $2 million euros for each ship. “Not only is this illegal, it’s unacceptable,” Rubio said. “It’s dangerous to the world, and it’s important that the world have a plan to confront it,” Rubio said.
Pejsova, from the Brussels School of Governance, added that the EU also has past experience with Operation AGENOR—the military pillar of the European-led Maritime Awareness in the Strait of Hormuz initiative, deployed back in 2020. But that was a defensive mission intended to offer safe passage to commercial shipping. She said it went dormant in 2024 but could potentially be revived but in a defensive capacity.
However, without a diplomatic deal, Europeans see any operation as a nonstarter. They fear that they are in a worse place than before the war started, when Iran allowed ships to pass without charging a fee. Europeans are painfully aware that Trump’s lack of foresight alerted Iran to its leverage over the global economy, leaving Europeans (and Asians and Arabs) to pick up the tab.
This post is part of FP’s ongoing coverage. Read more here.
X: @anchalvohra
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