04-04 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
The crew were about 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometres) from Earth and were quickly closing in on the moon.
NASA has released the first images taken from inside the Artemis II Orion spacecraft, where four astronauts are currently travelling on a mission around the moon.
In a photograph shared on Friday, mission commander Reid Wiseman captured a view of Earth through the capsule’s window. The image shows the planet veiled in sweeping cloud formations, appearing to rise beyond the spacecraft as the crew continues its journey.
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A different image shows the entire globe with the oceans. A green aurora even glows.
As of midmorning Friday, Wiseman and his crew were 100,000 miles (160,000 kilometres) from Earth and were quickly closing in on the moon with another 160,000 miles (258,000km) to go. They should reach their destination on Monday.
The three American astronauts and one Canadian will fly around the moon in the Orion capsule before looping back toward Earth without landing. The spacecraft was set on its course after the crew fired Orion’s main engine on Thursday night.
“I knew that that is what we would see,” mission specialist Christina Koch, the first woman to journey around the moon told ABC News in a video call on Thursday night.
“But there’s nothing that prepares you for the breathtaking aspect of seeing your home planet both lit up bright as day and also the moon glow on it at night with a beautiful beam of the sunset and knowing that we’re going to get similar views of the moon. I’m really excited for that. And then, of course, heading home,” she added.
‘You look beautiful’
The mission is now on its third day out of a planned 10-day flight.
On the sixth day of the mission is the day the crew fly by the moon. The spacecraft reaches its closest approach, approximately 4,000-6,000 miles (6,450-9,650km) above the lunar surface.
The astronauts will travel around the far side of the moon, the first humans to journey that far into deep space in more than 50 years. Before that phase, the crew are rehearsing the scientific observations they plan to carry out during the lunar flyby.
A flyby is when a spacecraft flies around a planet or the moon without landing, using the object’s gravity to change direction and head back the way it came.
After looping around the moon, the spacecraft will use its gravity to return to Earth, with splashdown expected in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on April 11 at about 00:06 GMT (8:06pm ET, on April 10).
For the astronauts, the journey is not only a technical mission but also a personal one. Seeing Earth from deep space is a reminder of humanity’s shared identity, said Victor Glover, the first Black astronaut to make the journey beyond low-Earth orbit.
“Trust us, you look amazing. You look beautiful,” Glover told ABC, describing the view of Earth from space. “From up here, you look like one thing. Homo sapiens is all of us – no matter where you’re from or what you look like. We’re all one people.
“We call amazing things that humans do ‘moonshots’ for a reason. This mission brought us together and showed us what we can do … when we bring our differences together and use all the strengths to accomplish something great.”
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04-04 00:02 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Water plant hit in Kuwait as Iran warns to expand attacks if Trump follows through on threats to escalate strikes.
A US fighter jet has been shot down over Iran, state media says, adding that the US military is trying to conduct a search and rescue operation in central Iran. An unnamed US official has confirmed the news with Reuters.
Iran later said it shot down a US A-10 aircraft near the Strait of Hormuz.
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04-03 04:03 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Jassim al-Budaiwi calls on UN Security Council to guarantee ‘uninterrupted navigation through all strategic waterways’.
The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) has called on the United Nations to act to immediately halt Iranian attacks across the region, condemning the strikes as a “flagrant violation” of international law and the United Nations Charter.
Speaking at the UN Security Council (UNSC) on Thursday, GCC Secretary-General Jassim al-Budaiwi urged the council to “take all necessary measures” to bring an end to Iran’s attacks on Gulf countries.
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The UNSC must “take all necessary means” to “protect maritime corridors and guarantee the uninterrupted maritime navigation through all strategic waterways” in the region, al-Budaiwi said.
He also stressed that the six GCC states – Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates – must be included in any talks or deals with Iran “to enhance regional security and prevent further escalation or the repetition of such attacks in the future”.
“The GCC reaffirms the urgent need to immediately halt these attacks; restore security, stability and calm in the region, and ensure the safety of air and maritime navigation, the safety of international supply chains, and the protection of global energy markets,” al-Budaiwi said.
Iran has carried out daily missile and drone attacks across the Middle East, including in Arab Gulf nations, since the United States and Israel launched a war against the country on February 28.
While Iranian officials have said they are acting in self-defence and striking US and Israeli-linked targets, the attacks have struck civilian sites across the Gulf, including several of the region’s critical energy facilities.
Iran also has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, a key Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil and liquified natural gas supplies transit, sending global energy prices skyrocketing.
Reporting from the Emirati city of Dubai on Thursday evening, Al Jazeera’s Zein Basravi said frustrations are growing across the Gulf as the US-Israeli war on Iran drags on.
“The GCC countries were from day one – months before this war even began – trying to keep it from happening. But it was like trying to stop a slow-moving car crash. And effectively, that crash has happened in their front yard,” Basravi said.
He noted that 85 percent of the projectiles fired by Iran have targeted Gulf countries, with the UAE the hardest hit.
“Their primary threats are the retaliatory attacks by Iran,” Basravi said of the GCC. “And their primary focus is bringing that to an immediate close – and that means ending the conflict as soon as possible.”
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04-03 04:03 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
Salah Sarsour, the president of Islamic Society of Milwaukee, was reportedly detained while driving on March 30.
Ten Muslim civil rights groups have issued a joint letter denouncing the arrest of a Palestinian American community leader in Wisconsin, Salah Sarsour.
The president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a vocal Palestinian advocate, Sarsour was reportedly pulled over by 10 federal agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) while driving on March 30.
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The joint letter explains that Sarsour was transferred to a detention facility in Illinois, then to Indiana, leaving his family “scrambling to determine his whereabouts”.
A lawful permanent resident, he had lived in the US for 32 years, according to the letter, and his wife and children are all US citizens. Sarsour has been in immigration detention ever since his arrest.
“We must be clear that Salah is being targeted on the basis of his Palestinian and Muslim background,” the letter, issued Thursday, said.
It was co-signed by organisations including the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Muslim Legal Fund of America, and the US Council of Muslim Organizations.
The groups noted that, under President Donald Trump, a number of immigrant activists, scholars and foreign students had been targeted for deportation based on their pro-Palestinian solidarity.
“His detention reflects a troubling trend we’ve seen with Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Mohsen Mahdawi and other voices critical of Israeli oppression,” the groups wrote.
“This administration is weaponizing the U.S. justice system to advance the interests of a foreign state, Israel, at a time when it is carrying out a genocide in Gaza.”
The groups have launched an online campaign for Sarsour’s legal defence. By Thursday afternoon, it had earned over $35,500 in donations.
While the Trump administration has yet to issue a statement about Sarsour’s arrest, it has taken a hardline approach to pro-Palestinian activism.
When running for re-election in 2024, Trump pledged to crack down on protesters denouncing human rights abuses during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
According to statements obtained by the Washington Post in May 2024, Trump reportedly called the protest movement a “radical revolution” and said that, if he were elected, he planned “to set that movement back 25 or 30 years”.
Within months of taking office in January 2025, Trump proceeded to take action.
Starting in March 2025, his administration moved to strip hundreds of millions of dollars in federal funds from universities that saw protests unfold on their campuses, citing claims of anti-Semitism.
Federal agents also arrested legal permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student leader, stripping him of his green card.
One scholar, Rumeysa Ozturk of Turkiye, saw her student visa revoked for co-signing a pro-Palestinian opinion piece in her school’s student newspaper.
The arrests and subsequent efforts to rapidly deport the activists and scholars have prompted widespread condemnation as a violation of the Constitution’s First Amendment right to free speech and protest.
Officials in Wisconsin have been among the leaders to denounce Sarsour’s arrest as the latest in a series of efforts to stifle free speech. Two local alderpersons, JoCasta Zamarripa and Alex Bower, called the situation a “nightmare”.
“This is an illegal detention of a longtime permanent U.S. resident, as Mr Sarsour is a Milwaukeean who is lawfully present in our community,” they wrote in a joint statement on Thursday.
“The unacceptable activities by ICE — and especially illegally detaining citizens without due process — must stop immediately. How dare federal ICE agents come into our community and unlawfully detain a grandfather, a faith leader, a Wisconsinite!”
State Senator Chris Larson, meanwhile, underscored that the federal government has yet to offer any reasons publicly for Sarsour’s arrest.
“We have already seen numerous Muslim activists unfairly and unlawfully targeted by the Trump Administration for their beliefs and their speech,” Larson wrote.
“These Unconstitutional assaults on our freedoms should alarm all of us. When any individual or group is targeted by the government for their speech, all of our freedoms are threatened.”
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04-03 04:03 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
US president has said that he will use tariffs to bring down costly medical drugs, but the impact remains uncertain.
United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order that could slap long-threatened tariffs of up to 100 percent on some patented drugs if pharmaceutical companies don’t reach deals with his administration in the coming months.
Under Thursday’s executive order, companies that have signed a “most favoured nation” pricing deal and are actively building facilities in the US will have a zero-percent tariff.
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For those that don’t have a pricing deal but are building such projects in the US, a 20 percent tariff will apply, but it will increase to 100 percent in four years.
A senior administration official told reporters on a press call that companies still have months to negotiate before the 100 percent tariffs kick in. Bigger companies will have 120 days, and 180 days are offered for everyone else.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity to preview the executive order before it was issued, did not identify any companies or drugs that were in jeopardy of getting hit with the increased tariffs.
But the source noted the administration had already reached 17 pricing deals with major drugmakers, 13 of which have signed.
In Thursday’s executive order, Trump wrote that he deemed the tariffs necessary “to address the threatened impairment of the national security posed by imports of pharmaceuticals and pharmaceutical ingredients”.
The order arrived on the first anniversary of Trump’s so-called Liberation Day, when the president unveiled sweeping new import taxes on nearly every country in the world, sending the stock market reeling. Those “Liberation Day” tariffs were among the duties the Supreme Court overturned in February.
Critics, pharmaceutical leaders and medical groups warned of the consequences the new tariffs could bring.
Stephen J Ubl, the CEO of the pharmaceutical company trade group PhRMA, said taxes “on cutting-edge medicines will increase costs and could jeopardize billions in US investments”.
He pointed to America’s already large footprint in biopharmaceutical manufacturing and noted medicines sourced from other countries “overwhelmingly come from reliable US allies”.
Trump has launched a barrage of new import taxes on US trading partners since the start of his second term and repeatedly pledged sky-high levies on foreign-made drugs.
But the administration has also used the threat of new levies to strike deals with major companies — like Pfizer, Eli Lilly and Bristol Myers Squibb — over the last year, with promises of lower prices for new drugs.
Beyond company-specific rates, a handful of countries have reached trade frameworks with the US to further cap tariffs on drugs sent to the US.
The European Union, Japan, Korea and Switzerland will see a 15 percent US tariff on patented pharmaceuticals, matching previously agreed rates for most goods.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom will get 10 percent, which Thursday’s order noted would “then reduce to zero” under future trade agreements.
The UK previously said it secured a zero-percent tariff rate for all British medicines exported to the US for at least three years.
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04-03 00:01 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
US president says Washington is ‘getting very close’ to achieving goals as he promises to bomb Iran into ‘Stone Ages’.
Washington, DC – When the White House announced that Donald Trump would be making a speech to the nation about the war on Iran, it was expected that the United States president would make a major announcement.
But in his remarks late on Wednesday, which lasted less than 20 minutes, Trump only repeated the same statements he has been circulating for weeks.
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Some analysts had expected Trump to announce either an end to the war or an escalation in the conflict, such as ground operations inside Iran, but the US president only gave the public and the media more of the same rhetoric.
Here are the key takeaways from the address:
More of the same
In his brief remarks, the US president made four familiar points: The war is necessary; it has already been won; it must continue; and it will wrap up soon – all arguments he has been making daily.
The US president did not provide details on how the war would actually end or what kind of deal he is seeking with Iran.
“We are gonna finish the job. We are getting very close,” Trump said.
Trump said on March 11 that the war would end “soon”.
“I don’t think that the speech had any point, and I failed to grasp what he was trying to do and convey. It was really a repetition of everything that he had said in the past,” Sina Azodi, assistant professor of Middle East Politics at George Washington University, told Al Jazeera.
Other analysts echoed that assessment.
“I did not detect anything new. Essentially, it was a summary of all of the tweets he has issued over the last 30 days, almost in chronological order,” Trita Parsi, executive vice president at the Quincy Institute, told Al Jazeera.
“But precisely because it does not appear to have anything new in it, it reveals that he really does not have a plan.”
Making a case to US public
While the speech did not include any major announcement, it provided Trump with a chance to make his case to a US public that is weary of foreign conflicts after the protracted wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trump’s main point was that Iran was going to acquire nuclear weapons and use them, so the US and Israel had to act.
But Trump himself had repeatedly said that the US strikes on Iran’s facilities in June 2025 had obliterated the country’s nuclear programme.
Even before last year’s war, Trump’s own intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, told lawmakers that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.
Iran has repeatedly denied seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to possess an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Trump also suggested on Wednesday that the conflict was about settling scores with Iran after decades of rivalry between Washington and Tehran.
“This fanatical regime has been chanting, ‘Death to America. Death to Israel’ for 47 years. Their proxies were behind the murder of 241 Americans in the Marine barracks bombing in Beirut, the slaughter of hundreds of our service members with roadside bombs,” Trump said.
“They were involved in the attack on the USS Cole, and they carried out the countless other heinous acts, including the just horrible, bloody atrocities of October 7 in Israel.”
The USS Cole bombing in 2000 was carried out by al-Qaeda operatives with no known links to Iran.
There also has been no evidence linking Iran directly to Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack in southern Israel, which was followed by a US-backed war on Gaza that leading rights experts say amounts to genocide.
Public opinion polls have suggested that a strong majority of people in the US oppose the conflict. On Wednesday, Trump tried to amplify the same talking points that have failed to rally the public around the war over the past month.
Parsi noted that the war is losing popularity in Trump’s own Republican base.
A recent YouGov poll suggested that only 28 percent of respondents, including 61 percent of Republicans, support the war.
In a previous YouGov survey released on March 2, 76 percent of Republican respondents said they support the war.
“They’re losing patience,” Parsi said of Trump’s supporters. “They’re paying the price at the gas station, at the grocery store, and it’s going to get much, much worse if this continues.”
Still, some Trump allies were happy with Wednesday’s speech.
“PERFECT SPEECH,” pro-Israel commentator Mark Levin wrote on X.
No mention of talks
Since the start of last week, Trump has been saying the US is negotiating with Iran, suggesting that a deal may be imminent.
Less than 24 hours before his address on Wednesday, Trump wrote in a social media post that “Iran’s New Regime President” asked the US for a ceasefire, suggesting that negotiations may be ongoing.
Iranians were quick to deny the claim. They have previously dismissed Trump’s assertion
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04-03 00:01 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
A military operation would pose chemical, logistical, and tactical hurdles, experts say.
United States President Donald Trump is reportedly considering dispatching US special forces to Iran to seize the country’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium in what experts say would be a complicated and risky military operation.
Ensuring that Iran has no nuclear weapons, nor the capacity to produce any using enriched uranium, has been one of the US’s main stated demands during talks with Iranian officials over the past year. It was also the central justification Washington used when it bombed Iranian nuclear facilities during Iran’s 12-day war with Israel last year and for starting the ongoing conflict in February, despite being in active talks with Iran at the time.
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Iran maintains that its nuclear programme is for civilian energy purposes only, despite having enriched uranium far beyond the threshold required for that. Iranian officials have stated they are open to discussing reducing the level of enrichment in past negotiations, but have refused to dismantle Iran’s nuclear programme entirely, a matter of national sovereignty, they say.
In 2015, the former Obama administration negotiated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran and other nations. Under that, Iran agreed not to enrich uranium to high levels and to be subjected to frequent inspections. However, Trump withdrew the US from this agreement during his first term as president.
Here is what we know about Iran’s uranium.
What enriched uranium does Iran have, and where is it?
Currently, Iran is believed to have about 440 kilograms (970 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60 percent – the level at which it becomes much faster to get to the 90 percent threshold needed to produce a nuclear weapon. That amount is enough, theoretically, to produce more than 10 nuclear warheads, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi told Al Jazeera in early March.
At the time, Grossi said almost half of the 60-percent-enriched uranium was probably still being stored in the tunnel complex at Iran’s Isfahan nuclear facility. An unknown quantity is also believed to be stored at the Natanz facility. These two underground nuclear sites, along with a third at Fordow, were destroyed or badly damaged in US-Israeli air strikes in the 12-day war last year and have been targeted during the current conflict.
Even if the US knows where the enriched uranium is, a military ground operation to extract it would face significant chemical, logistical, and tactical hurdles, however, experts say.
How would US forces access the uranium?
With great difficulty, military experts told Al Jazeera.
Isfahan, where about half of the enriched uranium is believed to be stored, is more than 480 kilometres (about 300 miles) inland, hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest US naval ships.
That means that US forces, possibly alongside Israeli troops, would need to be transported over a very long distance through an active warzone. They would also have to bring in heavy equipment, including excavators, as tunnel entrances are believed to be buried under rubble following US-Israeli aerial attacks.
Once there, ground forces would have to secure a substantial perimeter around the site and then hold that territory for as long as the operation to dig the nuclear material out from the underground facilities may take.
“To send advanced units to the cordon the area, to start an excavation project, the duration of which is impossible to quantify, all the while remaining safe from what would be nearly constant fire from Iran, this is risky and not feasible,” said Jason Campbell, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “I don’t see any senior planning military officer pursuing this,” Campbell, who was also a former senior US defence official in the Obama and Trump administrations, added.
If US forces did manage to extract the uranium, what would they do with it?
Cheryl Rofer, a former radiochemist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, estimates that the uranium is most likely being stored in the form of hexafluoride gas. This gas is difficult to handle and reacts with water to produce extremely toxic and corrosive chemicals.
The uranium hexafluoride must be stored in small, separated canisters to prevent neutrons from multiplying out of control and causing an intense radiation burst. This means that the cylinders would have to be kept at a distance from each other and that any damage to them as a result of an air strike or an accident during hurried transport could trigger the release of toxic chemicals, posing a radiological hazard to nearby personnel, explained Francois Diaz-Maurin, editor for nuclear affairs at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, in an article earlier this month.
There is also the option of destroying th
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04-03 00:01 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
US State Department accuses Iran of attacking civilian sites as Trump shares footage of destruction of Iranian bridge.
The United States has reiterated that Washington is open to diplomacy with Tehran as the US-Israel war on Iran drags on – and as US President Donald Trump renews his threats to destroy the country’s civilian infrastructure.
US State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott told Al Jazeera in a TV interview on Thursday that Trump pursued talks with Iran before the war, but accused Iran of continuing to pursue a nuclear weapon.
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“The president is always open to diplomacy, but he’s also been clear we will see his objectives be fulfilled here,” Pigott said.
Trump addressed the nation about Iran late on Wednesday, echoing his past statements that the US is winning the war. But he did not provide details on how the conflict would end. Trump also did not present any plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, whose closure by Tehran has sent energy prices soaring.
The US and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28, days after a round of negotiations in Geneva that Omani mediators and Iranian officials described as positive.
Last year, Israel also attacked Iran amid ongoing nuclear talks between Washington and Tehran. That war saw the US bomb Iran’s three main nuclear facilities in an operation that the White House dubbed “Midnight Hammer”.
“The president always prefers diplomacy,” Pigott said.
“That’s why the argument and ‘the how we got here’ was so important from the president’s speech yesterday, describing how he pursued diplomacy before Operation Midnight Hammer.”
Pigott added that after the June 2025 attack, “the door for diplomacy was opened yet again, and yet we saw the Iranian regime continue in that pursuit of a nuclear weapon”.
Iran denies seeking a nuclear weapon, while Israel is widely believed to possess an undeclared nuclear arsenal.
Before last year’s war, Trump’s own intelligence chief, Tulsi Gabbard, told lawmakers that “Iran is not building a nuclear weapon”.
Trump has repeatedly said that the US strikes on Iran’s facilities obliterated the country’s nuclear programme.
Gabbard also said earlier this month that there “have been no efforts” by Iran to rebuild its enrichment capacity after the US strikes.
However, Tehran has insisted on its right to enrich uranium domestically. It has also ruled out negotiations over its missile programme and support for non-state actors hostile to Israel, including Hezbollah and Hamas.
Pigott stressed on Thursday that the US is involved in diplomatic efforts in the Middle East as it pursues its stated goal of destroying Iran’s military capabilities.
“Rest assured that we see diplomatic engagement at the highest levels of this administration, across this administration, with our partners in the region, with the parties involved here, to pursue our interests, to work with them and to see what can happen here,” he said.
The US State Department spokesperson accused Iran of targeting “civilians and civilian infrastructure” across the region, which he said underscores the “intolerable threat of that Iranian regime having a nuclear weapon”.
Iran has retaliated against the US and Israeli assault with missile and drone attacks across the region, targeting US assets as well as energy facilities and civilian sites, including hotels and airports.
Pigott’s comment on Thursday came moments after Trump shared footage of a US attack targeting a major civilian bridge in Iran, warning of similar strikes in the future.
“IT IS TIME FOR IRAN TO MAKE A DEAL BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE, AND THERE IS NOTHING LEFT OF WHAT STILL COULD BECOME A GREAT COUNTRY,” Trump wrote in a social media post.
In his speech on Wednesday, Trump also threatened to destroy Iran’s power plants, and earlier this week, he said the US could also obliterate the country’s water desalination stations.
Attacking civilian sites amounts to collective punishment and is prohibited under international law, legal experts say.
Barbara Slavin, a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center, told Al Jazeera on Thursday that Trump is “scrambling” and trying to escalate the war before ending it.
“I think that Donald Trump is looking for a way to end the war without it being an abject failure. And so he is clutching at various straws at this time,” Slavin said.
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04-03 00:01 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper accused Iran of blockading the waterway ‘to hold the global economy hostage’.
The United Kingdom has gathered foreign ministers from 40 countries to discuss options to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, a vital shipping route that has been choked off by the United States and Israel’s war against Iran.
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper said Iran’s “recklessness” in blockading the waterway was “hitting our global economic security” as she chaired the virtual meeting on Thursday.
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“We have seen Iran hijack an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage,” Cooper said in opening remarks broadcast to the media before the rest of the meeting took place behind closed doors.
Iran’s retaliatory attacks on commercial ships, and the threat of more, have halted nearly all traffic in the strait that connects the Gulf to the rest of the globe’s oceans, shutting a critical path for the world’s flow of oil and sending petroleum prices soaring.
The US is not among the countries attending the meeting, which comes after US President Donald Trump stated that securing the waterway is not his country’s job.
Trump has also disparaged the US’s European allies for failing to support the war and renewed his threats to pull the US out of NATO.
The countries participating in Thursday’s summit, including the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Canada, Japan, and the United Arab Emirates, have signed a statement demanding that Iran stop its attempts to block the strait and pledging to “contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage” through the waterway.
The meeting is considered a first step, to be followed by “working-level meetings” of officials to hammer out details.
“On the plus side, this is a broad coalition. It’s not just Western, it’s not just NATO. It involves countries [like] the UK, France, the Scandinavian countries, Baltic countries, but it also involves Bahrain, it involves the UAE, it involves Panama, it involves Nigeria,” said Al Jazeera’s Rory Challands, reporting from London.
“At the heart of it, though, there is a capabilities question. What can they do? How much naval capacity can any of these countries offer?”
Not by force
No country appears willing to try and open the strait by force while fighting rages, and Iran can target vessels with antiship missiles, drones, attack craft and mines.
According to Challands, the British prime minister has been “very explicit” about nonmilitary solutions.
“Keir Starmer has no interest in getting involved in this war. Most of the countries gathered [have] no interest in getting involved in the war,” he said.
Following the meeting, Challands said that British military planners from the British Ministry of Defence will meet next week “with many of the same players that have gathered here today” to discuss how to ensure security for shipping after the war has ended.
Starmer said Wednesday that resuming shipping “will not be easy,” and will require “a united front of military strength and diplomatic activity” alongside partnership with the maritime industry.
The coalition is, in part, an attempt to demonstrate to the Trump administration that Europe is stepping up to do more for its own security, especially as the US president threatens to leave NATO.
French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that it is not feasible to launch a military operation to force open the strait.
“This was never the option we have supported because it is unrealistic,” he said.
“It would take forever,” Macron said, and expose those crossing the strait to “coastal threats”, particularly from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has “significant resources as well as ballistic missiles”.
Macron has suggested the best way to ensure the strait’s opening is by talking directly to Iran.
There have been 23 direct attacks on commercial vessels in the Gulf since joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran ignited the war on February 28, and 11 crew members have been killed, according to Lloyd’s List Intelligence, a shipping data firm.
Iran has said that “non-hostile” ships may transit the Strait of Hormuz and the waterway is only closed to vessels of enemy countries and their allies.
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04-03 00:01 · 中东,局势,AlJazeera,中东
About 20 percent of global oil and gas passes through the Gulf waterway.
As Iran’s de facto blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues, Britain is hosting virtual talks with about 40 countries to discuss strategies to reopen the waterway, through which 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies are shipped from Gulf producers in peacetime.
Iran, whose territorial waters extend into the strait, has blocked it to shipping since the United States and Israel launched the war on Iran with strikes on Tehran on February 28.
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Its blockade has sent global oil prices soaring above $100 per barrel – a jump of roughly 40 percent from before the war – forcing countries, particularly in Asia, to ration fuel and cut industrial production. On Thursday, Malaysia ordered all civil servants to work from home in a bid to conserve energy.
The US is not taking part in these talks, after Trump said this week that it was not its responsibility to reopen the strait. He told European countries to “go get your own oil“.
What is on the United Kingdom’s meeting agenda? Who is attending? Here’s what we know:
Who is attending?
UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper is chairing a video conference meeting of more than 40 countries, which began at midday [11:00 GMT] on Thursday.
In a news conference on Wednesday, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said those countries which recently signed a statement saying they were ready “to contribute to appropriate efforts to ensure safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz” would take part in this week’s talks.
France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, Canada, Australia and the United Arab Emirates are among them.
European nations had initially refused to get involved in reopening the Strait of Hormuz, fearing they would be dragged into the war.
But as the war continues and oil and gas prices spike globally, EU nations have decided to join the UK’s coalition to reopen the strait, an EU official told the Reuters news agency.
The US is not included.
In a post on Truth Social earlier this week, the US president took aim at allies, “like the United Kingdom”, which, he said, have “refused to get involved in the decapitation of Iran”, telling them to either buy US fuel or get involved in the rapidly escalating war.
“You’ll have to start learning how to fight for yourself, the U.S.A. won’t be there to help you anymore, just like you weren’t there for us. Iran has been, essentially, decimated. The hard part is done. Go get your own oil!” he said.
What’s on the meeting’s agenda?
On Wednesday, ahead of the talks, Starmer said countries would “assess all viable diplomatic and political measures that we can take to restore freedom of navigation, guarantee the safety of trapped ships and seafarers and resume the movement of vital commodities”.
“Following that meeting, we will also convene our military planners to look at how we can marshal our capabilities and make the strait accessible and safe after the fighting has stopped,” Starmer added.
Any plan to reopen the strait will also include ensuring the maritime waterway is free of landmines, as well as a second phase to involve protecting tankers as they cross the area, the UK government said.
Christopher Featherstone, associate lecturer at the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of York, told Al Jazeera that a crucial component of this summit is to signal that other nations, besides the US, are committed to acting diplomatically to get things back to normal.
“Starmer is clearly trying to signal commitment to the US-UK relationship to Trump, showing the UK can lead some European allies,” he said.
“However, he is also signalling to Iran and the rest of the world that these nations are not acquiescing to Trump’s demands either,” Featherstone added.
Can the coalition actually make a difference?
Speaking to the media on Wednesday, Starmer acknowledged that reopening the strait “will not be easy”.
“I do have to level with people on this,” the British prime minister said.
Since the war began, Iran has demanded international recognition of its right to exercise authority over the Strait of Hormuz as one of its five conditions for calling a ceasefire.
It has allowed only a handful of vessels from countries it deems “friendly” to pass through the strait since early March – mostly those flying flags of India, Pakistan, Malaysia and China. Other nations are also scrambling to strike deals with Iran to secure safe passage for their vessels.
Last week, Iranian media reported that the country’s parliament is seeking to pass legislation to collect tolls from ships transiting the strait.
According to media reports, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has already begun operating a “toll booth” system to control vessel t
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