Trump Asks China, Japan and France to Send Warships to Hormuz - While Bombing Iran

Donald Trump bombed Iran's main oil export terminal on Friday, threatened to obliterate its entire oil infrastructure if the strait doesn't stay open, and then - on Saturday morning - posted on social media asking China, France, Japan, South Korea, and the United Kingdom to send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz "open and safe."

Read that again slowly. Washington just invited Beijing - its chief strategic competitor and Iran's only remaining major oil customer - to co-police a waterway that the United States itself is currently using to wage war. The geopolitical logic is either brilliant or deranged, and analysts are split on which.

This is Day 16 of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. The conflict has now spread to Dubai. It has hit the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. It has spiked gasoline prices 20 percent in two weeks and jet fuel to nearly $4 a gallon. It is reshaping the global economy in real time - and the Trump administration just escalated the diplomatic chess game by asking its adversaries to join a naval coalition it created the conditions for needing.

What Happened Saturday: The Escalation Cascade

Saturday's events came fast. A missile struck a helipad inside the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad - one of the largest U.S. diplomatic facilities in the world, and a building that has been hit before by Iran-aligned militias. No group immediately claimed responsibility. Smoke was visible in AP photos from the compound. The embassy had already issued a Level 4 security alert for Iraq on Friday, citing the danger of Iran-aligned militia groups targeting U.S. citizens and infrastructure. Saturday's strike proved the warning right.

Simultaneously, Iran issued something it had never done before in this conflict: a direct threat against the commercial infrastructure of a neighboring Gulf state that is not the United States or Israel. Tehran warned people to evacuate the busiest port in the Middle East - Dubai's Jebel Ali - as well as Abu Dhabi's Khalifa port and Fujairah port. Iran claimed the U.S. was using these "ports, docks and hideouts" to launch strikes on Kharg Island, without presenting evidence.

Debris from an intercepted Iranian drone struck an oil facility in the UAE, triggering a fire at Fujairah port. AP images confirmed the blaze. The United Arab Emirates is home to Dubai, one of the world's busiest airports and financial hubs, and Jebel Ali is the logistics backbone of the entire Gulf region. An actual Iranian strike on Jebel Ali would be a different order of magnitude from anything that has happened so far.

Iran's joint military command also reiterated its threat to attack "oil, economic and energy infrastructures" in the region if Washington follows through on Trump's warning to strike Iran's wider oil network.

The Kharg Island Calculation: Trump's Nuclear Oil Option

On Friday, U.S. forces struck Kharg Island - a small coral island 21 miles off Iran's coast that handles virtually all of Iran's oil exports. U.S. Central Command said it destroyed naval mine storage facilities, missile storage bunkers, and other military sites. Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency claimed the oil infrastructure itself was untouched - and that what was hit included an air defense facility, a naval base, the airport control tower, and a helicopter hangar belonging to an offshore oil company.

Trump's framing on social media was deliberately vague and maximum-pressure: he said the U.S. had "obliterated" military sites and warned that Iran's entire oil infrastructure could be next if Tehran interferes with Hormuz shipping.

"Kharg Island is the main node," said Petras Katinas, energy researcher at the Royal United Services Institute. "It doesn't matter which regime is in power - new or old. If Iran were to lose control of Kharg, it would be difficult for the country to function." (AP)

Iran has exported 13.7 million barrels since the war started, with tankers still loading at Kharg as of Wednesday according to maritime intelligence company TankerTrackers.com. The island's oil infrastructure remained intact after Friday's strikes - but the threat of destroying it is now openly on the table in a way it was not before.

JPMorgan's global commodity research team warned earlier this week that a strike on Kharg's oil terminal would have "major economic implications" - a significant understatement, given that it would effectively eliminate Iran's primary revenue stream and send global oil prices into uncharted territory.

The China Gambit: Asking Your Rival to Save Your War

The most strategically audacious move of Saturday came not from the battlefield but from Trump's social media feed. He posted that he hopes China, France, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom "and others" send warships to keep the Strait of Hormuz open and safe.

This is not a small ask. Consider what it actually means for each nation:

China is Iran's largest oil customer and has spent years building a strategic partnership with Tehran as a counterweight to U.S. pressure. Beijing has no interest in helping a U.S. war effort succeed. But it also cannot afford for the Strait to stay closed - the same strait that carries the energy imports that fuel its entire manufacturing economy. Trump has just handed Xi Jinping an impossible dilemma: join the coalition and implicitly legitimize U.S. strikes on Iran, or refuse and watch its economy strangle.

Japan and South Korea are U.S. treaty allies with almost no domestic oil production. Both import massive quantities of Middle Eastern crude that transits Hormuz. They are economically desperate for the strait to reopen - but sending warships to a zone where the U.S. is actively bombing Iran would be their most significant military deployment since World War II, and politically explosive at home.

France is a NATO ally but has consistently pushed for diplomatic solutions and has its own complex interests in the region. Paris is not going to eagerly send the French Navy to backstop a unilateral U.S.-Israeli war that most European governments privately opposed.

The ask is clever in a brutal way: if any of these nations comply, they legitimize the U.S. operation. If they refuse, they take political responsibility for the economic pain their own populations are suffering from the energy crisis. Either outcome gives Washington something to work with.

2,500 More Marines and the USS Tripoli

The military escalation continued in parallel. A U.S. official - speaking anonymously to discuss sensitive plans - confirmed Friday that 2,500 additional Marines from the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit, aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, are being deployed to the Middle East. The Wall Street Journal first reported the deployment.

Marine Expeditionary Units are equipped for amphibious landings but specialize in embassy security, civilian evacuations, and disaster relief. Their deployment does not necessarily signal an imminent ground operation - but it does mean the U.S. now has a force capable of one if the order comes.

Commercial satellite imagery spotted the Tripoli near Taiwan, which puts it more than a week away from Persian Gulf waters. The Navy already had 12 ships in the Arabian Sea, including the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and eight destroyers. Total U.S. service members on the ground across the Middle East remains undisclosed.

Israel separately announced another wave of strikes, claiming its air force had hit more than 200 targets inside Iran in the last 24 hours - missile launchers, defense systems, and weapons production sites. U.S. and Israeli warplanes have together struck military and other targets across the country with a pace that Iranian air defenses have struggled to keep up with, according to U.S. Central Command's own damage assessments.

The Economic Cascade: Airfares, Groceries, and the Jones Act

Two weeks of war have already rewritten the economic reality for ordinary consumers in ways that extend far beyond the pump.

Jet fuel hitting $3.99 per gallon - up from $2.50 before the war - is the number that will soon show up on airline tickets. United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby has already warned that fare increases will "probably start quick." Airlines outside the U.S. have already announced fuel surcharges. The summer travel season is approaching. The math is brutal: fuel accounts for a massive share of airline operating costs, and the Hormuz closure has forced rerouting of flights around the Middle East, burning more fuel per flight to get from Europe to Asia.

"Can't underscore what a massive jolt this is to the logistics, trucking, agriculture sectors," said Patrick De Haan, petroleum analyst at GasBuddy, writing on X. Diesel has hit $4.83 a gallon in the U.S. - a 28 percent jump since the war began.

Shipping costs are cascading up. Fuel accounts for 50 to 60 percent of total operating costs for oceangoing cargo, according to Patrick Penfield, professor of supply chain practice at Syracuse University. When fuel prices surge, ships slow down, trucks slow down, and everything that moves by sea or road gets more expensive.

Europe is facing a particularly severe squeeze. Its benchmark natural gas price has risen 75 percent since the war began. Countries like Germany and France, which rely heavily on Middle Eastern LNG, are being hit harder than the energy-producing United States. California, which relies on fuel imports from Asia, is already paying $5.34 per gallon for regular gas.

The Trump administration is now eyeing a waiver of the Jones Act - the 1920 law requiring goods shipped between U.S. ports to move on American-flagged vessels. Waiving it would allow foreign ships to help address domestic supply crunches, but it's politically sensitive and opposed by U.S. shipping interests and labor unions. The White House has confirmed it is examining the option.

Grocery prices have not yet moved significantly, but food economists are watching carefully. Higher diesel prices hit farm equipment, fertilizer production (derived from natural gas), and the entire distribution chain. "If oil prices remain high for a month or more," said David Ortega, professor of food economics at Michigan State University, "we're in different territory." (AP)

Russia Wins Either Way - And Zelenskyy Is Furious

The Iran war is generating a strategic windfall for Moscow that European leaders are only beginning to reckon with openly.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced Thursday a 30-day waiver on Russian oil sanctions - a measure designed to free up stranded Russian cargoes and ease the supply shortage caused by the Hormuz crisis. The logic is straightforward: if Russian oil can reach markets, it reduces the global price pressure created by Iran's effective exit from export markets.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking in Paris alongside French President Emmanuel Macron, was blunt about the consequences: "This easing alone by the United States could provide Russia with about $10 billion for the war," he said Friday. "This certainly does not help peace." (AP)

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz went further, saying six G7 members had told Trump the Russia oil waiver was the wrong signal - and that Washington went ahead anyway. "There is currently a price problem, but not a supply problem," Merz said during a visit to Norway. "I would like to know what additional motives led the U.S. government to make this decision."

The arithmetic is damning. The Iran war has pushed crude from $70 to roughly $100 a barrel. Russia, which the West has tried to strangle economically through sanctions since 2022, is now selling its oil at prices far above what its budget needs. Every barrel of Iranian oil that cannot reach China is a barrel China buys from Russia instead - at prices that fund artillery shells and drone production for use against Ukraine.

Ukraine, which has become one of the world's leading drone producers, offered to share its interceptor technology with U.S. and Gulf partners. Trump turned it down on air Friday: "No, we don't need their help on drone defense." (AP)

Russia is simultaneously in talks about a Ukraine peace deal - talks that are now "on hold due to the Iran war," Zelenskyy said, though he expected them to resume next week. Putin, whatever he says publicly, has no reason to rush.

Lebanon's Catastrophe and Iran's Changing Calculus

The humanitarian ledger is growing. Lebanon has now recorded nearly 800 killed and more than 850,000 displaced as Israel launches relentless waves of strikes against Iran-backed Hezbollah militants in the country. Shelter systems are overwhelmed. The country - which was already economically broken before this war - is being hollowed out.

Inside Iran, the military picture is one of persistent defiance but diminished capability. Iranian forces have continued launching missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states - but U.S. Central Command has reported an 86 percent intercept rate on Iranian missile salvos, according to previous BLACKWIRE reporting. The missile arsenal is being depleted; Iran's air defense network has been systematically degraded by Israeli and American strikes.

Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei - who took power after his father Ali Khamenei was killed in earlier Israeli strikes - has maintained the rhetoric of resistance while the actual military capacity narrows. Iran's parliamentary speaker has warned that any strike on Kharg's oil infrastructure proper would "provoke a new level of retaliation" - raising the question of what that level would look like when the current level is already pushing the UAE to evacuate its ports.

The refugees are already moving. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians are fleeing overland into Turkey and other neighboring states. Iran's internet remains intermittently disrupted. The country's civilian economy - which was fragile before the war - is being crushed by the combination of military spending, infrastructure damage, and the psychological weight of a war with no visible end state.

What Happens Next: Three Scenarios

The trajectory of this conflict now hinges on a small number of decisions that will be made in the next 72 hours. Here are the three paths analysts are tracking.

Scenario 1: Kharg Oil Infrastructure Struck. If Trump orders the destruction of Kharg's oil terminal - not just its military sites - Iran's oil export capacity collapses near-instantly. Global oil prices surge past $130, possibly toward $150. Iran's government loses its primary revenue stream. But Iran's military command has threatened a "new level of retaliation," and that likely means a serious strike on Gulf oil infrastructure - Ras Tanura, ADNOC facilities, Qatar LNG terminals. The global economy takes a body blow. This is the scenario markets are pricing as a tail risk but not a base case.

Scenario 2: UAE Escalation. If Iran follows through on its threat to Jebel Ali or other UAE ports - not just evacuations but actual missile strikes on commercial infrastructure - Dubai's status as a regional hub is immediately in question. Insurance costs for Gulf shipping go vertical. Airlines ground Middle East routes. The diplomatic coalition against Iran solidifies significantly, and the UAE - which has tried to stay carefully neutral - is forced to pick a side.

Scenario 3: Negotiated Pause. The Russia sanctions waiver, the China warship request, the Jones Act discussions - all of these are levers that could be part of a diplomatic off-ramp that nobody is publicly advertising yet. Trump has consistently demonstrated a preference for the deal over the sustained conflict when the domestic economic pain becomes politically inconvenient. Oil at $100, gasoline at $3.63 and rising, and airfares about to spike - that pain is arriving in an election year. A ceasefire announcement would likely come with enormous political fanfare. The question is whether Iran is in any position to negotiate one, or whether the new leadership under Mojtaba Khamenei feels it cannot be seen as capitulating.

The Hormuz question - open or closed, controlled or contested - is the fulcrum everything else rests on. Whatever happens next, Saturday's request to Beijing and Tokyo marks the moment Washington acknowledged it cannot manage this waterway alone. That is, strategically, a significant admission wrapped in the language of coalition-building.