UK hosting 30 nations, not including US, on efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz

Foreign ministers from almost three dozen countries are meeting in an effort to exert diplomatic and political pressure to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route that has been choked off by Iran in response to the US-Israeli strikes.

The US is not among the countries attending today’s meeting, which comes after US President Donald Trump made clear that he thinks securing the waterway, closed as a consequence of the war, is not America’s job. Trump has also disparaged America’s European allies for failing to support the war and renewed his threats to pull the U.S. out of NATO.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer says the virtual meeting chaired by Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper “will assess all viable diplomatic and political measures we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and to resume the movement of vital commodities.”

Iranian attacks on commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the waterway that connects the Persian Gulf to the rest of the globe’s oceans, shutting a critical path for the world’s flow of oil and sending petroleum prices soaring.