Trump Says NATO Allies Will Send Minesweepers to Hormuz
Trump said NATO allies agreed to deploy minesweepers to the Strait of Hormuz following summit talks in Ankara, though allied governments have not independently confirmed the commitment.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that NATO allies have agreed to deploy minesweepers to the Strait of Hormuz, a claim made from the sidelines of the alliance’s summit in Ankara as governments continue to search for a way to reopen the mined waterway to commercial shipping, Middle East Eye reported.
Trump did not name which allied navies would contribute vessels or specify a deployment timeline. As of Tuesday evening, no NATO member government had issued an official statement confirming the commitment in the terms Trump described.
What Trump Said
Trump’s comment came amid a broader, more contentious exchange with European allies over their conduct during Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. air campaign against Iran that began in late February. He told reporters he did not want European “money,” he wanted their “loyalty” — a remark tied to allied governments’ restriction of U.S. access to their airspace and bases during the campaign, Fox News reported. That friction, and the summit’s broader agenda, is covered in our report on the allied rift shadowing the Ankara summit.
Against that backdrop, a minesweeper commitment from NATO allies — even a partial or informal one — would mark a shift from the alliance’s posture through most of the crisis. NATO governments have so far avoided direct military involvement in reopening the strait, preferring proposals routed outside the alliance’s formal command structure.
The Allied Posture So Far
Several NATO members already operate minehunters and support vessels in Gulf waters as part of standing regional deployments, and Britain has been assisting U.S. minesweeping operations since April, when Trump first ordered U.S. Navy mine-clearance work “tripled” and threatened to “shoot and kill” any vessel laying mines in the strait, the CNBC report from that period noted. The Pentagon at the time warned that fully clearing the strait’s minefields could take up to six months, according to The National.
More recently, Italy’s navy chief of staff said his country was prepared to send up to four vessels — two minesweepers, an escort ship and a logistics vessel — to support Hormuz clearance operations, though Rome’s offer has been described as contingent on a broader ceasefire holding. France and Britain have separately floated a joint proposal for a multinational maritime security mission in the strait, an idea Iran has so far rejected, Al-Monitor reported ahead of the Ankara summit.
NATO foreign ministers met with Gulf Arab counterparts on the summit’s margins specifically to address the stalemate over reopening the waterway, which carries roughly a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil trade. The core disagreement — whether shipping should route through a U.S. Navy-escorted southern corridor near Oman or the IRGC-supervised northern route — remained unresolved heading into Tuesday’s leaders’ sessions.
Why the Mine Threat Persists
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to normal commercial traffic since late February, when Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps began laying sea mines and boarding merchant vessels in response to the U.S.-Israeli air campaign. That threat has not abated: on Monday, IRGC drones struck two commercial tankers transiting the strait, an attack detailed in our coverage of the tanker strikes and Washington’s revocation of Iran’s oil export waiver, which also sent Brent crude spiking above $76 a barrel.
Any additional minesweeping capacity would address the physical minefields but not the broader security question — Iranian fast-attack boats and anti-ship missile batteries along the coast continue to threaten shipping independent of the mines themselves. U.S. Central Command struck several of those positions near Bandar Abbas, Qeshm, and Sirik in response to Monday’s tanker attacks.
What Comes Next
The mine-clearance question sits inside the larger 60-day negotiating window established by the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding, which Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed June 17. That framework is meant to resolve Hormuz navigation rights alongside Iran’s nuclear program and sanctions relief, but roughly three weeks of the window have already been consumed by funeral proceedings for Iran’s late supreme leader, renewed strikes, and stalled diplomacy.
Whether the minesweeper commitment Trump described Tuesday becomes a formal, funded NATO operation — or remains an unconfirmed talking point from the summit sidelines — will likely become clearer as allied defense ministries issue their own statements in the coming days. America Strikes will update this story as confirmations arrive.
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