BRUSSELS ― Donald Trump makes a mess. Europe gets called on to clean it up, or at least pay a hefty price to deal with it.
That’s a pattern the EU fears is about to repeat itself in the Strait of Hormuz after the U.S. president announced a ceasefire agreement with Iran, five EU diplomats and officials said. European leaders had already promised to help clear the contested waterway once the fighting stopped.
Not only could France, Germany and the U.K. now be on the hook to pay for an expensive operation escorting ships and clearing mines in the strait, but their commercial vessels may also have to pay large fees that didn’t exist before the war just for the privilege of passing through. Trump said on Wednesday he was considering a “joint venture” with Iran and Oman to levy a toll.
Added to the fact that Europe’s energy bills will likely remain elevated for weeks or even months if the ceasefire holds, and the trend becomes clear: Europe is having to pay ever more just to remain part of a transatlantic alliance that has become highly unpredictable.
“It’s a pattern,” said Nacho Sánchez Amor, a Spanish socialist lawmaker who sits on the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. “In Gaza, we will pay for reconstruction. In Ukraine, we’re paying for the war — basically alone at this point. Now we might have to pay to clear the Strait of Hormuz.”
He added: “NATO is meant to be based on reciprocal loyalty. But this is not how it’s working.”
The next big challenge
In the hours after Trump announced his ceasefire deal on Tuesday evening Washington time, climbing down from threats of total annihilation against Iran, EU leaders cheered a win for diplomacy. The 11th hour deal delivered “much-needed” de-escalation, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen posted on social media.
But even as they exhaled, leaders were bracing for the next big challenge — how to reopen the strait. French President Emmanuel Macron, who has clashed with Trump over the war, said Wednesday that a group of 15 countries including France would “facilitate the resumption of maritime traffic” through the strait “once the conditions are right.”
Easier said than done. Even distributed across the navies of several powers, including non-EU Australia and the U.K., the costs of such an operation would be considerable. The U.S.-led Operation Earnest Will, which involved protecting Kuwaiti tankers from Iranian attacks in 1987-1988, cost participating allied nations several hundred million dollars, likely more than $1 billion when adjusted for inflation.
In a statement on Wednesday, U.K. Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper also mentioned the need to reopen the strait. But her comments pointed to the need for a “swift resolution to the conflict” rather than naval escorts and mine-clearing.
Indeed, no sooner had Trump announced the ceasefire than British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, were on their way to the Middle East to try to make the ceasefire permanent. (It is currently slated to last two weeks.)
Starmer will hold “further talks on practical efforts to restore freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz” with several Gulf leaders, his office said, while Kallas is due to sit down with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister and the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council, Jasem Al Budaiwi.
“The key thing is that this ceasefire has to hold,” said an EU diplomat with knowledge of the discussions and who was granted anonymity to discuss non-public deliberations among European countries. The pledge from France, Germany, the U.K. and others to clear the strait is “not a blank cheque,” the diplomat said. “We stand ready to help — under the right conditions.”
If no mine-clearing operation is necessary, Europe will likely continue to reel from the war’s impact on energy supplies and markets for some time.
Asked how soon gas pump prices would come down following a ceasefire, a French government spokesperson said: “I’m cautious. We’ve already heard announcements about price decreases that don’t get passed on [to consumers].”
Imposing will on the world
That spirit of watchful wariness is likely to carry into an informal gathering of European leaders happening later this month in Nicosia, Cyprus. In addition to the fallout from the Iran war, they will be talking about how to finance Ukraine.
The bottom line, according to the EU diplomat, is that Europe is still suffering from the effects of its relative weakness on the world stage.
“We don’t have the power, in the classical hard power sense of that word, to impose our will onto the world,” the diplomat said. “We get stuck trying to negotiate and leverage our way out of situations and minimizing effects.”
Clea Caulcutt and Gabriel Gavin contributed reporting.
