US Allies Unlikely To Join Oil Tanker Protection Force In Persian Gulf - Think Tank Chief

WASHINGTON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 16th July, 2019) A US proposal to create an international coalition to escort oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz will not get off the ground owing to lack of funding and the resistance of US allies to the idea, Institute for Gulf Affairs Founder and Director Professor Ali al-Ahmed told Sputnik.

"It won't happen," al-Ahmed said. "You notice that the talk of such a group has stopped."

The Trump administration is considering a plan to create an international coalition to protect maritime seaways off Iran and Yemen following recent attacks on oil tankers in the Gulf of Oman, US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford said on July 10.

The US government was already discussing with several nations the creation of a coalition to protect freedom of navigation in the Straits of Hormuz and the Bab al-Mandab, Dunford told reporters

However, President Donald Trump himself had pulled the rug out from under the feet of hawks in his administration who favored the idea, al-Ahmed said.

"Such a group needs funding which is not possible especially after Trump cleverly said we do not care about the Strait of Hormuz," al-Ahmed noted.

Even major industrial Northeast Asian nations most dependent on middle East oil imports like Japan and South Korea, while unwilling to openly contradict the US government, were clearly not in favor of the proposal, al-Ahmed observed.

"The Japanese and Koreans will always go along the US but they won't do it with enthusiasm," he said.

Amid rising tensions between the United States and Iran in the Persian Gulf, where almost a third of the world's oil transport happens, the US is attempting to build a military coalition in order to "secure maritime traffic."

According to General Dunford, in the course of the next few weeks, the United States will find out which countries "have the political will" to support the coalition proposal.