Finland’s President Alexander Stubb said NATO allies have to take Donald Trump at his word when the US president puts the future of the alliance on the line to safeguard passage through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump insisted on Sunday that allies in NATO and Asia should help ensure oil and gas shipments move through the key waterway, which has been effectively closed since the US and Israel attacked Iran a just over two weeks ago. NATO faces a “very bad” future if US allies fail to assist it, Trump said.
About one fifth of the world’s oil moves through the narrow strait.
“We obviously have to take everything that the president of the United States says seriously,” Stubb said in an interview on Bloomberg Television on Monday.
“Those countries that have the capacity and the will to help the United States will do that, and should do that,” Stubb said, adding that NATO as a defensive bloc doesn’t “do military attacks as such.”
The Finnish president said peace mediation is needed in the Middle East and suggested that Europeans or India could get involved. “The actual original operation was not discussed with allies, but I’m sure that President Trump is now in conversation with the UK, with France, Germany — the big players.”
Earlier on Monday, European Union foreign ministers stressed that they did not want to escalate the war, treading cautiously about even redirecting an existing Red Sea naval mission to the vital passage for energy shipments.
Stubb added that the problem standing in the way of a peace process is that “you kind of have three players, Israel, the US and Iran, all with more or less different interests.”
Next week, Stubb will host a summit of the Joint Expeditionary Force — a multinational rapid-response force — in Helsinki.
Stubb said that Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is likely to join the March 26 meeting via video link. Canada is also considering eventual membership as it moves to expand its security partnerships while the US pulls back from multilateral arrangements, Defense Minister David McGuinty told Bloomberg.
The UK-led JEF currently includes the Nordic and Baltic countries and the Netherlands. It hosts joint exercises, enabling its members to act collectively in crises. Stubb’s homeland Finland joined JEF in 2017 and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 2023, just a year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
Asked about Trump’s focus on a solution for Russia’s war in Ukraine amid the strikes in the Middle East, Stubb said he was concerned.
“I do sort of sense certain frustrations and impatience with the situation right now, which does worry me,” Stubb said.
“There are now kind of two fronts, of course, one in Iran, where the US is really involved, and then one in Ukraine, where the US is mediating,” he said. “And then anytime there is a situation ongoing where American troops are involved, where the costs are astronomical, then I think the focus is there more than on the peace mediation. Unfortunately.”
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
