Oil prices continue climbing after allies give Trump cold shoulder in Hormuz

(Originally published March 17 in “What in the World“) Trump’s war keeps pushing up the price of oil.

While Iran is letting some oil tankers—notably its own—through the Strait of Hormuz, its attacks on others is keeping nearly all tankers from traversing the narrows.

Brent crude rose back above $102/barrel Tuesday and U.S. gasoline prices keep rising, with diesel fuel rising more than a third in the past month.

U.S. allies Australia, Germany, and Japan have declined Trump’s demand that they send forces to help re-open the Strait. “This is not our war. We did not start it,” said German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. Pistorius also suggested that it was absurd for Trump to expect smaller allied navies to “accomplish in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful U.S. Navy there cannot achieve on its own.”

But clearing the strait of Iran’s mines won’t apparently be happening immediately, as the Pentagon’s three Gulf-based minesweeping vessels are at least three days away. Two of the three vessels, the USS Tulsa and the USS Santa Barbara, were both spotted in Malaysia Sunday. The third, the USS Canberra, was off the southern Indian coast.