‘Where do we go from here?’ US asks as allies snub Trump’s call for help in Hormuz

(Originally published March 18 in “What in the World“) Oil prices continued to inch upward as Iran resumed attacks on Gulf oil production and Trump failed to re-open the Strait of Hormuz. U.S. gasoline prices rose in tandem, climbing Tuesday to their highest since October 2023.

Trump’s calls on Australia, China, Japan, South Korea, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to come to his aid against Iran have so far fallen on deaf ears. And Iranian drones struck a natural gas field, an oil storage facility, and an oil tanker in the UAE, while another drone hit an oil field in Iraq.

Why does the U.S. need help from allies re-opening the Strait of Hormuz, anyway? Because in the past 20 years, the U.S. Navy slowly but surely dismantled its mine-clearing capabilities as the threat was believed to have receded after the end of the Cold War and budgets came under pressure. The Navy closed its Mine Warfare Command in 2006, and de-commissioned four of its last mine-clearing Avenger-class vessels in 2025. Yet efforts to give its Independence-class littoral combat ships mine-clearing capabilities have largely underwhelmed.

Now, the last four mine-clearing ships are based in Japan. And two of the only three combat ships with mine-clearing capabilities based in the Middle East were last seen in Malaysia.