To Canada’s knowledge, no formal request to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization has been made to help secure the Strait of Hormuz, Foreign Affairs Minister Anita Anand said after U.S. President Donald Trump’s public appeal to that effect, as the oil shock from the Iran war continues.
On Monday, Trump called on members of NATO, which includes Canada, and other nations to help the U.S. secure the Strait, which Iran has throttled for two weeks and through which around 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply passes.
“To our knowledge, a request has not been made to NATO for the type of assistance that is being requested and Canada, as a founding member of NATO, continues to support the principles of collective defence,” she said.
“At this point, it’s important to remember that those conversations among NATO allies have not occurred.”
On Monday, Trump said “numerous countries” had told him they were “on the way” to help the U.S. with the Strait of Hormuz.
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“We strongly encourage the other nations to get involved with us and get involved quickly and with great enthusiasm,” he said.
Anand said it would be “prudent” for Trump to “turn to the principles upon which NATO was founded, and in particular the principles of collective defence and deterrence, which are triggered by NATO as a whole, not by one country within the NATO family.”
She reiterated Canada’s position that Ottawa was not consulted before the U.S. and Israel launched military action in Iran and added that Tehran’s blockage of the Strait of Hormuz was contrary to international law.
In a Financial Times interview on Sunday, Trump said NATO would suffer a “very bad future” if it did not help the U.S.
“It’s only appropriate that people who are the beneficiaries of the Strait will help to make sure that nothing bad happens there,” Trump told the Financial Times.
“If there’s no response or if it’s a negative response I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO.”
The U.S. was hitting Iran “very hard,” Trump said.
“They’ve got nothing left but to make a little trouble in the Strait … these people are beneficiaries and they ought to help us police it,” he said, adding that “China should help too,” citing China’s energy dependence on oil from the Strait of Hormuz.
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