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UK and Japan among countries that are considering options but yet to commit warships to blockaded shipping route

Countries including the UK, Japan, China and South Korea have said they are still considering their options but without making commitments after the US president, Donald Trump, urged them to send warships to the strait of Hormuz to secure the vital shipping route.

The effective closure of the strait of Hormuz by Tehran, in retaliation for airstrikes by the US and Israel, has proved catastrophic for global energy and trade flows, causing the largest oil supply disruption in history and soaring global oil prices.

However, the international response to Trump’s call for the dispatch of warships has so far proved vague and reluctant, with countries unwilling to commit to a military response that could prove treacherous for their navies.

The skipper of the Sea Owl One is suspected of producing forged documents when it was boarded by coast guard.

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UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Sunday that Muslims around the world continue to face discrimination and exclusion, urging governments and societies to take stronger action to combat Islamophobia, Anadolu reports.

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PM rejects Trump’s call for reinforcements to stave off mounting economic crisis

Henry Bodkin Jerusalem Correspondent. James Titcomb Technology Editor
Published 2026:03:15T21:54Z
Sir Keir Starmer is refusing to send warships to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz after Donald Trump called for reinforcements to stave off a mounting economic crisis.
Britain and other allies are resisting Mr Trump’s request for a “team effort” as stock markets braced for further chaos on Monday.
Ed Miliband, the Energy Secretary, said the Government was “intensively looking” at what could be done to reopen the strait, but refused to offer a firm commitment.
Ministers are considering sending mine-hunting drones but are not currently prepared to send any warships, one of which is already at sea, to clear the crucial oil route. Iran has threatened any country that joins a mission against it in the strait.
France, Germany and South Korea also signalled reluctance to answer the United States president’s demand, as international concern grows that the war is being prolonged indefinitely.
Oil prices jumped to $106 overnight from Friday’s price of $103 after Mr Trump’s targeting of Iran’s key production base over the weekend.
With Iran’s blockade on oil leaving the strait having triggered a rise in the price of energy bills, Sir Keir will address Britain on Monday to announce £50m of emergency support shielding the worst-hit families.
In a speech from Downing Street, the Prime Minister will say: “It’s moments like this that tell you what a government is about.
“My answer is clear. Whatever challenges lie ahead, this Government will always support working people. That is my first instinct – my first priority – to help you with the cost of living through this crisis.”
However, the support is expected to apply only to one million households that use heating oil, primarily in rural parts of Northern Ireland, leaving the majority of the country without fresh support to tackle the threat of rising costs.
On Sunday, Chris Wright, the US energy secretary, warned that there were “no guarantees” that oil prices would fall in the coming weeks.
Sir Keir held a phone call with Mr Trump on Sunday night in which they discussed the “importance of reopening the Strait of Hormuz”.

Row with Trump could deepen

The UK’s refusal to send warships risks worsening a row between Sir Keir and Mr Trump, who said the Prime Minister was “no Churchill” after he refused to support the initial US attacks.
Mr Trump is set to unveil a coalition of nations willing to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz later this week, US officials told The Wall Street Journal on Sunday night.
However, several countries are reportedly reluctant to commit vessels until the war ends, increasing pressure on the US president to cease hostilities.
Iran’s deputy foreign minister warned Sir Keir against joining the offensive on Sunday, saying: “We are not at war with the UK ... but any participation in this war would be regarded as participating in the US-Israel war of aggression against Iran.”
The US president said in an interview late on Saturday night that he was not ready to negotiate a ceasefire with Iran.
“Iran wants to make a deal, and I don’t want to make it because the terms aren’t good enough yet,” he said. Iran said it had not asked for a ceasefire and saw no reason for talks with the US.

Israeli military officials, meanwhile, suggested the fighting could carry on for six weeks, far longer than initial estimates.
On Saturday, Mr Trump ordered air strikes on Kharg Island, the “crown jewel” of Iran’s oil infrastructure, setting up a week of turbulent energy trading.
He later suggested that the US may attack Kharg Island again “just for fun”.
Wall Street bank JP Morgan said the strikes marked “an escalation in the conflict” and predicted that “an acute shortage of products” would start to bite by the end of the week.
Analysts at Panmure Liberum said the price of Brent Crude could soar to as much as $110 a barrel when markets open on Monday.
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The UK-first trial gave 99 care leavers a one-off £2,000 cash lump sum to see if it prevented them from falling into homelessness

The UN confirmed Thursday the findings of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine (the Commission) regarding the deportation and transfer of 1,205 children from Russian-occupied areas in Ukraine.

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Two-thirds of young people rely on social media for their financial investment decisions, with one in five turning to artificial intelligence.

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Launched 11 years ago by Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to combat online censorship, Operation Collateral Freedom currently enables 177 media outlets and press freedom websites that are blocked in 39 countries – more than half of them in Russia and China – to continue disseminating information online and keep reaching their public.

Archived

By duplicating censored news sites onto mirror sites hosted on the servers of major Content Delivery Networks (CDNs), it allows those living under authoritarian regimes to access their content directly from a standard web browser, without needing to install a VPN (virtual private network). No fewer than 57% of the websites protected by RSF are blocked in just two countries – Xi Jinping's China (53 blocked sites) and Vladimir Putin's Russia (49 blocked sites).

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In 2025, RSF restored access to the website of Circle 19, an independent group that provides uncensored information about China. Beijing blocked its platform less than a year after it published a statement of principles denouncing state propaganda on 4 June 2024, the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre [...] This initiative aims to provide resources showing that the right to information is deeply rooted in China's traditions, history and political system, contrary to Beijing's propaganda.

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Voice of Tibet, an international radio station broadcasting in both Tibetan and Mandarin, was given 16 mirror sites in 2025. RSF also unblocked the Uyghur Post website, one of the few Uyghur-language media outlets reporting on abuses by the authorities in Xinjiang, the autonomous region in northwest China where most Uyghurs live, which has become an information black hole as a result of the regime’s repression.

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Meduza is the leading independent Russian media outlet in exile and, in March 2022, became one of the first to benefit from Operation Collateral Freedom. However, every time Meduza created a mirror site, the Russian authorities were able to quickly block it. To counter this unprecedented threat, the generation of mirror sites was automated on an unprecedented scale using technology developed by RSF combined with the technical expertise of Meduza’s staff. As a result, 4,556 mirror sites had been created for Meduza by 2025, allowing it to receive a total of 1.9 billion content requests, making it the most visited site of all those benefitting from Operation Collateral Freedom.

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