UK hosts military planning conference on Strait of Hormuz amid transatlantic rifts

The United Kingdom is hosting a two-day military planning conference in London starting Tuesday, bringing together military planners from more than 30 countries and regions to advance efforts to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, against the backdrop of widening transatlantic divisions fueled by the Iran war.

The meeting is part of UK and French leadership of a multinational coalition to reopen the strategic strait "as soon as conditions permit, following a sustainable ceasefire agreement" between the United States and Iran, the UK government said in a press release on Wednesday.

Participants will focus on "detailed discussions on military capabilities, command and control, and how military forces can deploy to the region," according to the release.

The London talks follow an international conference hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron and British Prime Minister Keir Starmer in Paris on April 17, which was attended by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

At that summit, European leaders called for the "unconditional, unrestricted, and immediate re-opening" of the Strait of Hormuz and confirmed the establishment of an "independent and strictly defensive" multinational mission to protect merchant vessels, reassure commercial shipping operators and conduct mine clearance operations, the UK press release said.

Since the start of US-Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, through which one-fifth of the world's oil is shipped, has pushed global energy prices higher, disrupted supply chains, and raised costs for households and businesses across Europe and beyond.

Read more: How Hormuz crisis is testing global shipping to limit – and hurting global economy

European powers are now moving from diplomatic gestures toward concrete and actionable military measures to protect their own interests, said Cui Hongjian, director of the Center for European Union and Regional Development Studies at Beijing Foreign Studies University.

A further escalation of the conflict and a wider spillover of tensions in the Middle East would directly threaten the vital interests of the UK, France and other European countries, Cui told China Media Group.

Beyond energy supplies and critical shipping lane security, Europe also faces severe spillover risks including surging refugee flows and heightened threats of terrorist attacks, both major, longstanding headaches for European governments, he added.

Cui further observed that European countries, including the UK and France, initially sidelined in the conflict, are reluctant to fully subordinate themselves to Washington's strategic objectives.

"On one hand, they want to safeguard their own core interests," he said. "On the other, they seek to maintain political and military distance from the United States and demonstrate independent defensive military capabilities and a proactive readiness to intervene in the crisis." This, Cui noted, is the core calculation driving the UK and EU's latest moves.

Since the beginning of the US-Israeli military campaign against Iran, Washington has repeatedly called on its NATO allies to participate in what it termed escort operations in the Strait of Hormuz. However, those calls have been met with near-universal rejection from European member states.

The ongoing conflict has exposed deep fractures within the transatlantic framework, whether between the UK and the US or between America and other NATO members in Europe, Cui said.

These rifts over strategic goals, perceptions of real threats, and the specific methods to address them have become very profound, he said. "US-Europe relations, I think, can never go back to what they once were."