The British newspaper Financial Times published this Wednesday (1st) a report stating that the President of the United States, Donald Trump, threatened to stop the supply of weapons to Ukraine if European allies do not help Washington to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
This passage, almost completely closed by Iran since the start of the US and Israeli war against the Islamic regime, transported around 20% of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) before the conflict.
The Financial Times cited three Western government officials familiar with the discussions as sources.
According to the report, Trump demanded that the navies of other NATO countries help him reopen Hormuz, but received a refusal, with the alliance’s European governments claiming that such a task would be “impossible” while the conflict was ongoing and several of them claiming that this “war is not ours”.
According to the sources, Trump responded by threatening to stop the supply of weapons to Ukraine through a program through which European NATO members are paying for American weapons so that Kiev can use them in the war against Russia.
It was this pressure that generated a hastily released statement on March 19, through which France, Germany, the United Kingdom and other countries expressed their “willingness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the strait.”
According to one of the Financial Times’ sources, the person who insisted on the joint statement was NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte.
Another official said that Rutte, in a telephone call with France, Germany and the United Kingdom, claimed that Trump was “quite hysterical” over his refusal to help reopen Hormuz.
Despite the statement, nothing has been done yet. This Thursday (2), the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary, Yvette Cooper, will chair a virtual meeting with 35 countries to analyze measures that allow the strait to reopen, but only “when circumstances allow” – that is, when there is a ceasefire.
Contacted by the Financial Times, White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly did not confirm the threat to stop arms shipments to Ukraine, but said that “President Trump has made clear his disappointment with NATO and other allies and, as the president emphasized, ‘the United States will remember’”.
