Why arent other nations lending a hand to the US in the Hormuz region?

Alan Studied at University of Sheffield

There are lots of reasons but reason number one is…
drumroll please!!!

That guy.

Before we get into why - lets go into what the goals are, and what a competent course of action looks like.

So Trump’s supposed objectives before getting into all this were two-fold:

1) Eliminate Iran’s ability to produce Nuclear Weapons.
2) Stop the Iranian government from murdering civilians.

Good objectives! No problem with these at all.

Indeed it was the exact sae objectives Obama had with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action agreed between Iran and the US, UK, France, China, Russia, and Germany.

Iran agreed to reduce its enriched uranium by 98% and limit enrichment to 3.67%. So they’d be able to hold 300kg of uranium and keep its enrichment level 86% below where it would need to be for weapons.
They needed to let in the inspectors.

In exchange sanctions on Iran would be lifted.

And, guess what? It worked. Iran reduced its centrifuge capacity from 19,000 to 6,104 and gave them rest to the IAEA for supersion.
The arak heavy-water reactor was redesigned to prevent the production of weapons-grade plutonium, and lots of other measures were made. During the two years the deal existed Iran reduced their uranium levels to the 300kg required and all of it was at 3.67%.

The iranian economy started to improve and iranian living standards improved.

This happened 11 years ago! So what went wrong?

Donald Trump blew up the deal. And he did so unilaterally.
Remember how FIVE other countries signed up to the deal alongside the United States? Donald Trump didn’t consult them, nothing. He just trashed the deal.

Unsurprisingly, with the tantrum in chief unilaterally withdrawing from a deal with zero negotiation Iran said… “well “F U THEN” and started enriching uranium as fast as they could. By the end of Trump’s first term Iran had enrichment levels at 60% and was reducing inspector access more and more.

Then Trump lost the 2020 election, but the damage was already done, there was basically nothing Biden’s administration could do to turn this around. Iran simply didn’t trust any deal that had the US stamp on it anymore. But things weren’t in a critical situation yet their uranium stockpile growth slowed a little until the run up to the 2024 election.
By the end of 2025 it was at record high levels.

This was an utter disaster. You can visibly see when the JCPOA came into effect, and you can see when it ended.

So, at this point, Iran is angry and US allies are angry that the US had blown up a deal that was working .

And then the United States of America decided that it was time to elect Donald Trump to the white house again.

And, from day 1, Donald Trump started insulting America’s allies, angering everyone, and threatening allied territory.
Then he publicly tried to humiliate another world leader in front of the world press and unilaterally withdrew the US support from Ukraine.
Then he started a trade war with everyone.
Then he threatened to invade greenland.
Then he told the rest of NATO that he didn’t care one bit about their help during the war in afghanistan.

Unlike his predecessor’s Trump has not understood the concept that diplomacy is hard work, and that you need to persuade other people if you want them to do what you want. A DEAL requires both sides to do something for eachother - Trump just thinks that tweeting in block capital letters on his own personal social media network is enough to bully world leaders into what he wants.

So when he started “peace talks” with Iran which, according to people in those negotiations, had actually been going well and Iran were offering more than expected, and then he and Israel unilaterally started bombing Iran?

That was the moment where, I think, America’s allies finally lost their patience.

Donald Trump had unilaterally made a decision that was going to hurt their countries, and hurt their political prospects. And now he was demanding help after spending the best part of 10 years ignoring them, snubbing them, insulting them, and threatening them.

So the task of persuading these countries to help the US in a new military operation was already going to be extremely diffcult.

But there’s another layer to this:

No strategic thinking.

Think about it:- the most obvious lever Iran has to strike back is to effectively block the straight of Hormuz.
So, surely, the first priority in the campaign would be to prevent Iran from using that lever?

NOPE! Israel and the US decided to YOLO a military campaign and kill the Iranian leadership.
Sounds great on paper right? Wrong.

Anyone with an inkling of sense would understand that it was unlikely that the 89 Year Old Ayatollah was going to be the person making the bulk of decisions in the Iranian government.

There was no phase 2 for the plan - they clearly just thought killing an elderly man would win the war.

It didn’t.

So, of course, Iran bombed absolutely everything in reach - proving that the Iranian government are also not very clever.

The result?
Noone wants to give Donald Trump a win, and they don’t want to encourage him in further military action. Especially as he’s clearly indicated that Cuba are next in his list.

So Donald Trump is just tweeting hysterically about how unfair it is that countries like the UK didn’t mobilise the entirety of the naval forces and forget all other national security concerns to help Trump after he s*** the bed.

And that’s the answer to the question. Donald Trump created a crisis and escalated it every step of the way and alienated the USA’s allies along the way - which has resulted in the United States’ national security being in its most dangerous position for over 80 years.

Author: Alan