EUROPEAN NATIONS, JAPAN TO JOIN ‘APPROPRIATE EFFORTS’ TO OPEN HORMUZ STRAIT

Fri 20 March 2026:

Several European nations and Japan have issued a joint statement saying they would take steps to stabilise energy markets, a day after several strikes on energy facilities in the Gulf region sent oil and gas prices soaring amid the United States-Israel war on Iran.

The leaders of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Japan issued a joint statement on Thursday expressing their “readiness to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the [Hormuz] Strait.”

They did not specify what those efforts may entail but urged for “an immediate comprehensive moratorium on attacks on civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas installations”.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) last week authorised a coordinated release of its members’ strategic petroleum reserves, the largest in its history, in an attempt to counter rising global energy prices. “We will take other steps to stabilise energy markets, including working with certain producing nations ‌to increase output,” the statement said.

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Markets have been hammered since the start of the war on February 28, with Tehran hitting sites across the Gulf and effectively closing the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of global oil and gas flows.

European leaders have rejected demands by United States President Donald Trump ⁠to help ensure freedom of navigation in the Gulf’s key oil chokepoint by deploying warships as part of a naval coalition.

Thursday’s joint statement came ahead of a long-scheduled White House meeting between Trump and Japan’s Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, aimed at burnishing the decades-old security and economic partnership between Washington and its closest East Asian ally.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said before the meeting on Thursday that he would expect that Japan, which gets 95 percent of its crude oil supplies from the Gulf, would want to ensure its supplies are safe.

Takaichi has sought to move Japan away from ⁠a pacifist constitution imposed by Washington after World War II, but with the Iran war unpopular at home, she has so far not offered to assist in clearing the Strait of Hormuz.

The Japanese prime minister told parliament on Monday that Tokyo had received no official request from the US, but was checking the scope of possible action within the limits of its constitution.

-Source: Al Jazeera

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