US President Donald Trump’s demands for a coalition to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz appeared to fall on deaf ears on Monday as allies Japan and Australia said they were not planning to send navy vessels to the Middle East to escort ships through the vital waterway.
With the US-Israeli war on Iran creating turmoil across the Middle East and shaking up global energy markets in its third week, Trump on Sunday insisted that nations relying heavily on oil from the Gulf have a responsibility to protect the strait through which 20 pecent of the world’s energy transits.
This is just as Iran resumed its nightly drone campaign against Saudi Arabia on Monday, launching waves of strikes totaling about 63 hostile drones so far, the Defense Ministry said.
Ministry spokesperson Major General Turki Al-Maliki announced the attacks in a series of posts on X beginning at 2:22 a.m. local time, saying all the drones — targeting the Eastern Province and Riyadh — were intercepted and destroyed.
The new barrage has raised the number of drones intercepted in the Kingdom at over 230. A tally from the Defense Ministry’s posts have also shown more than 30 missiles had been shot down.
Iranian strikes have followed a pattern of nightly attacks interspersed with daytime lulls.
Neighboring Gulf states have reported higher tolls — Bahrain alone said it intercepted 125 missiles and 203 drones, with the attacks killing two people there and 24 others across the region.
The UAE reported engaging 294 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,600 drones, recording six fatalities.
The Dubai Media Office said on Monday that civil defense teams have successfully contained a fire resulting from a drone impact to one of the fuel tanks in the vicinity of Dubai International Airport. Operation at the airport has been temporarily suspended.
Markets in Asia reacted cautiously, with Brent crude rising more than 1 percent above $104.50 and regional share markets mostly weaker amid concerns about the risk to Middle East oil facilities and after Trump’s request for allies to get more involved.
“I’m demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on the way from Florida to Washington. “It’s the place from which they get their energy.”
Trump said his administration has already contacted seven countries, but did not identify the countries. In a weekend social media post he hoped China, France, Japan, South Korea, Britain and others would participate.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a staunch Trump supporter, said on Monday her country, constrained by its war-renouncing constitution, has no plan to dispatch naval vessels to escort ships in the Middle East from where it gets 95 percent of its oil.
“We have not made any decisions whatsoever about dispatching escort ships. We are continuing to examine what Japan can do independently and what can be done within the legal framework,” Takaichi told parliament.
Australia, another key Indo-Pacific security ally to the US that also relies heavily on fuels made with Middle Eastern crude, said it will not send naval ships to assist in reopening the strait either.
“We know how incredibly important that is, but that’s not something that we’ve been asked or that we’re contributing to,” Catherine King, a member of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s cabinet, said in an interview with state broadcaster ABC.
Trump may delay Beijing visit without China support
Trump told the Financial Times on Sunday he was expecting China to help unblock the strait before his scheduled meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing at the end of this month and might postpone his trip if it did not provide assistance.
“I think China should help too because China gets 90 percent of its oil from the Straits,” Trump said. “We may delay,” he said in reference to his visit if China did not offer support in the Gulf.
The Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.
Trump also ratcheted up pressure on European allies to help protect the strait, warning that NATO faces a “very bad” future if its members fail to come to Washington’s aid.
European Union foreign ministers will discuss on Monday bolstering a small naval mission in the Middle East but are not expected to decide on extending its role to the choked-off Strait of Hormuz, diplomats and officials say.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer discussed the need to reopen the strait with Trump, and with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, a Downing Street spokeswoman said on Sunday, while South Korea has said it would carefully review Trump’s request.
Global air travel remains severely disrupted due to the Iran war which has closed or restricted key Middle Eastern hubs including Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi, forcing airlines to cancel thousands of flights and stranding tens of thousands of passengers.
Supplies of jet fuel are also becoming a concern, with authorities in Vietnam warning the country’s aviation industry to prepare for potential flight reductions from April after China and Thailand halted exports of jet fuel due to the Iran war.
Drones cause fire, disrupt traffic at Dubai airport
The disruption to energy markets caused by the Iran war is an “abject lesson” in the risks of relying on fossil fuels, according to the UN climate secretary.
“Fossil fuel dependency is ripping away national security and sovereignty, and replacing it with subservience and rising costs,” Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UN climate change arm UNFCCC, will tell EU officials and government ministers at an event in Brussels on Monday.
Although some Iranian vessels have continued to pass and a few ships from other countries have successfully made the crossing, the passage has been effectively closed for most of the world’s tanker traffic since the United States and Israel attacked Iran on February 28.
Israel continued to launch strikes on Iran as well as Lebanon and Gaza, targeting militants from the Iran-backed Hezbollah and Hamas. The Israeli military said on Monday its troops had begun limited ground operations against positions in southern Lebanon held by Hezbollah.
Despite repeated claims from US authorities to have destroyed Iran’s military capabilities, drone attacks continued to threaten Gulf states on Monday.
Dubai authorities said they had contained a fire but temporarily suspended flights at the airport after a drone attack hit a fuel tank. Saudi Arabia intercepted 34 drones in its eastern region in one hour, state media said. No injuries were reported in either incident.
US officials responding to economic uncertainty over high oil prices predicted on Sunday that the war on Iran would end within weeks and that a drop in energy costs would follow, despite Iran’s assertion that it remains “stable and strong” and ready to defend itself.
Trump, who threatened more strikes on Iran’s main oil export hub Kharg Island over the weekend, has said previously that Iran wants to negotiate and that the US was talking to Iran, but Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi earlier on Sunday disputed that claim.
“We have never asked for a ceasefire, and we have never asked even for negotiations,” Araghchi told CBS’ “Face the Nation” program. “We are ready to defend ourselves for as long as it takes.”