The Ministry of External Affairs on Friday, April 17, said that India has been invited to the conference being hosted by the United Kingdom and France to push forward plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz in Iran, a key oil route choked off by the US-Israeli war on Iran.
On April 16, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stated that he had received a phone call from French President Emmanuel Macron where they discussed the situation in West Asia and the need to urgently restore safety and freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.
The leaders of France and the UK have gathered about 30 countries to attend Friday’s talks, including some from West Asia and Asia. The list has not been disclosed. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni are expected to attend in person, with others joining by video.
The operation is partly a response to Trump, who has berated allies for failing to join the war and said reopening the strait is not America’s job. The President has called allies “cowards,” said NATO “wasn’t there when we needed them,” and told Britain, “You don’t even have a navy.”
The Paris meeting is part of attempts by sidelined nations to ease the impact of a conflict they didn’t start and haven’t joined, but that has sent the global economy reeling.
After the war started on February 28, Iran effectively shut the narrow strait through which a fifth of the world’s oil usually passes, and US President Donald Trump’s announcement of a retaliatory American blockade of Iranian ports has raised the economic jeopardy even higher.
The US is not part of the planning for what has been branded the Strait of Hormuz Maritime Freedom of Navigation Initiative. In a post on X ahead of Friday’s conference, French President Emmanuel Macron said the mission to provide security for shipping through the strait would be “strictly defensive,” limited to non-belligerent countries and deployed “when security conditions allow.”
Coalition may focus on creating warning systems for ships passing the strait
Sidharth Kaushal, a research fellow in sea power at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said mine-clearing and creating a warning system for maritime threats were more likely roles for the coalition than warships escorting commercial tankers through the strait.
“You need huge numbers of vessels for that sort of thing, which nobody has,” he said.
Iran expert Ellie Geranmayeh, deputy head of the Middle East and North Africa program at the European Council on Foreign Relations think tank, said mine-clearing is an area where European countries and their partners could play a role.
“They would be a better party to do this than the United States, because once you have US military doing this and lingering on Iranian shores, it creates a potential arena for Iran and the US to have miscalculations and get back into a sort of military tension,” she said.
The invitation to India comes after Pakistan proposes hosting a second round of talks between the United States and Iran in Islamabad in the coming days, before the end of the two-week ceasefire.
The 21-hour talks between the US and Iran on Saturday, April 11, were the first of their kind since 1979 due to the involvement of top-level officials from both sides. The two sides, however, failed to secure a lasting peace deal to end hostilities following their talks in Pakistan over the weekend.
(With inputs from AP)
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