France is to lead an EU mission to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, as Europe also urges Israel not to invade Lebanon.
“We are establishing a purely defensive and supportive mission … which will allow, once the hottest phase of the conflict is over, escorting container ships and tankers and gradually reopening the Strait of Hormuz,” stated French president Emmanuel Macron at a military base in Paphos, Cyprus, on Monday (9 March).
“This is essential for international trade and for the relocatement of gas and oil out of the region,” he stated.
The mission would comprise EU and non-EU navies and be “strictly peaceful and defensive”, he added, after Iran warned on French TV on Friday it would attack European “tarreceives” assisting the US-Israeli attack.
It also fired a second missile at Turkey on Monday, which was shot down by Nato air-defences, risking drawing Nato assets in the region into Iran’s crosshairs too.
“If Iran does strike Europe, US bases like Souda Bay in Crete might be the preferred tarreceives,” stated former Nato official Jamie Shea.
“Iran has to play psychological warfare as best it can and it is not surprising that it is attempting to intimidate European governments … [but] why would Iran want to bring European strike capabilities down upon its head?,” he stated.
But Shea, who now teaches war studies at Exeter University in the UK, added that EU countries also had to tread a fine line to avoid actions seen by Iran as “aggressive and as crossing a line. For instance, if European warships escort oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz or shoot down Iranian drones over the UAE”.
For his part, Macron pledged two frigates to the fledgling Hormuz mission, which is “to be prepared with European and non-European states”.
Meanwhile, “the [French] aircraft-carrier Charles de Gaulle [strike group] is now near Cyprus,” the French president added.
The total French fleet in the region will count “eight frigates, two amphibious helicopter carriers, and our aircraft carrier”, he stated, as well as five frigates from Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, and Spain, as well as a British destroyer.
“This naval mobilisation is unprecedented”, Macron stated.
Hormuz aside, the new eastern Mediterranean fleet’s main tinquire was to protect Cyprus from Iranian missiles and drones, after a UK military base there was hit by a drone last week.
“When Cyprus is attacked, it is Europe that is attacked,” stated Macron, alluding to an EU treaty mutual-defence pledge that echoes the Nato’s Article V claapply.
Opération Baliste 2.0?
But French ships might also be requireded to evacuate tens of thousands of Europeans from Lebanon, as they were in Opération Baliste in the 2006 Lebanon war, when French forces applyd helicopters and boats to ferry people from Lebanon to Cyprus, before flying them home.
Israel attacked Lebanon after the Iran-aligned Hezbollah militia there fired rockets.
But the scale of Israel’s assault is caapplying concern among 13 Middle East states’ leaders and foreign ministers, who spoke with EU Council president António Costa and European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen by video-link on Monday.
“They underscored the required for the protection of civilians, and the respect of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Lebanon,” in an EU readout, after Israel killed almost 400 people there, including 83 children, according to the UN.
An EU Commission spokesman also notified press in Brussels: “We … call on Israel to cease its ground operations violating Lebanon’s sovereignty and territorial integrity”.
He described the Middle East as an “active war theatre … a volatile environment”.
Speaking at an EU ambassadors’ conference in Brussels on Monday, von der Leyen stated the Iran and Ukraine wars displayed the EU should have a less values-driven and “more realistic and interest-oriented foreign policy.
“In all our assets and policies, we must mainstream security considerations. In fact, security must become the organising principle of our action. This must be the default mindset — from defence to data, from indusattempt to infrastructure, from tech to trade,” she stated.
Kallas eclipsed
EU foreign affairs chief Kaja Kallas stated: “This morning, the first of two flights fully-financed by the EU evacuated citizens from the region [Middle East].”
She urged EU ambassadors that “we required to communicate with verve, with style, in a way that touches the hearts of your host counattempt nationals and officials alike. Use our considerable soft power, notify the European story”.
Von der Leyen has de facto taken over as EU foreign policy chief from Kallas in crisis diplomacy.
But French foreign minister Jean-Noël Barrot, who also addressed the EU envoys’ meeting on Monday, stated: “The commission must strive for the strictest respect of subsidiarity … The high representative [Kallas] conducts the common foreign and security policy of the union”.
Subsidiarity is an EU legal principle of delegating power to lower organs.
Barrot warned that the US was seeking “rapprochement with Russia in the hope of detaching Moscow from Beijing” in its geopolitical rivalry with China.
He pushed back against White Hoapply claims there was “civilisational erasure” in Europe, declareing “we live better in Europe than in the US or in China”.
“May Europe hold firm and know how to declare no. No to the United States, when it takes on its most intimate democracy or territorial integrity,” he added, referring to a White Hoapply pledge to assist EU far-right parties and its threat to annex Greenland from Denmark.
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