IMAGE: NICOLAS ECONOMOU/REUTERS
IN WARTIME strange things happen to alliances. Three weeks into America’s campaign against Iran, the splits are as visible as the missile launches. On one side, President Donald Trump berates European partners for failing to send warships to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. On the other, his Treasury Department has granted a 30-day hall pass to a fleet of tankers with ties to the Iranian military—the very people American forces are fighting.
Consider the Myra. In July the Trump administration sanctioned this tanker for its role in what the Treasury called a “vast shipping empire” selling oil illicitly for Iran and Russia. Two weeks ago the Justice Department sued to seize $15m from the network’s alleged mastermind, Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani, whose father advises Iran’s supreme leader. Yet as of Thursday, the Myra and scores of other sanctioned vessels can legally deliver their Russian crude to market, thanks to a temporary sanctions waiver aimed at calming oil prices that have jumped nearly 40% since the fighting began.
This is not the kind of assistance America’s European allies had in mind. Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, was blunt: “This is not our war; we did not start it.” Britain’s Keir Starmer vowed that his country would not be “drawn into the wider war”. France’s navy stays put in the eastern Mediterranean. Poland has ruled out sending forces. Italy’s foreign minister noted that no European country has offered “to send military ships to force a passage through the Strait of Hormuz”. The economic logic for joining is real—Europeans feel the sting of $100 oil too—but the political memory of Iraq, another American war sold to reluctant allies, remains raw.
The administration’s response oscillates between menace and necessity. Mr Trump warns that European reluctance “will be very bad for the future of NATO”. His Treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, argues the waiver merely lets oil already at sea reach buyers, with Russia’s cut already taxed at extraction. But the exemption covers traders, brokers and insurers too. Michelle Wiese Bockmann, a maritime analyst at Windward, notes that cargoes booked at pre-war prices can now be resold at today’s rates. “It’s quite likely,” she says, “that those cargoes will have doubled in value.” The beneficiaries include the very networks Washington designates as threats.
The contradiction speaks to the bind America finds itself in. Persian Gulf oil, roughly a fifth of the world’s supply, is effectively stuck behind a war zone. Releasing strategic reserves has not moved prices. So the administration has turned to the shadow fleet—the same vessels that moved Russian crude under sanctions and Venezuelan oil under embargo—to do what formal allies will not: keep global markets afloat. ■
