Front Burner - Can the U.S. re-open the Strait of Hormuz alone?

Episode Date: March 19, 2026

On Tuesday U.S. president Donald Trump took back his appeal for help to unblock the Strait of Hormuz, and called out his NATO allies for largely ignoring his request.Iran’s blockade of the chokepoint between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman has effectively cut off commercial shipping. This has halted the flow of nearly 20 per cent of the world’s oil supply, caused fuel prices to surge, and sent shockwaves through the global economy.As the Israel and U.S. war on Iran continues, today we’re asking whether the U.S. can open the Strait on its own, why allies are so reluctant to help, and if diplomacy — not military might — will be the key to unlocking the shipping route. Guest host Jason Markusoff speaks with Aaron Ettinger, professor of political science at Carleton University.For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts

The Alto High Speed Rail Project is on track. Expected travel time from Toronto to Montreal, three hours. Next stop, public consultations in your community. Make your voice heard. Visit altotrain.ca for more information. This is a CBC podcast. Hey, I'm Jason Markisoff in for Jamie. Well, we don't need too much help. We don't need any help, actually.

In fact, we just put out a notice. That was Donald Trump on Tuesday, taking back his appeal for help to unblocking. the Strait of Hormuz, while calling out his NATO allies for ignoring his request. I think NATO is making a very foolish mistake, and I've long said that, you know, I wonder whether or not NATO would ever be there for us. So this was a great test, because we don't need them, but they should have been there. Iran's blockade of the chokepoint between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Amman has effectively cut off commercial shipping, halting the flow of nearly 20 percent of the world's oil supply, causing fuel prices to surge.

and sending shockwaves through the global economy. As the Israel and U.S. war on Iran continues, today we're asking whether the U.S. can open the trade on its own. Why its allies are so reluctant to help, and if diplomacy, not might, will be the key to unlocking the Middle Eastern shipping route. With us today is Aaron Eddinger. He's a professor of political science at Carlton University,

and he joins me now. Hi, Aaron, it's great to have you here. Thank you very much. Great to be back. So Trump's demand to help clear the strait. to singled out Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, and China. And so far, we're recording this Wednesday afternoon we should clarify. Nobody's coming. Is that surprising to you?

It's not surprising to see a great deal of reluctance among American allies to help out. But what is remarkable is that nobody has put up their hands to say, I will help out. What we're seeing here is not entirely unprecedented, right? When the United States goes off on some of its unilateral missions, we have seen European allies say, ah, we're not going to take part of this. The 2003 Iraq war comes to mind. If military action proceeds without a new resolution of the Security Council, Canada will not participate. But I can't think of a time in recent memory in which the United States got zero cooperation from some of its core allies. That is the surprising part to me.

And why? And I mean, Trump points out that these countries, including Canada, have been long, critical of Iran. They don't want Iran to have nuclear capacities. Why are they not participating in this effort at all? Well, this is a very tricky strategic choice on the part of these countries. Indeed, they do have an interest in some of the objectives that the United States is trying to achieve, preventing Iranian nuclear proliferation, for example. But there are other interests at play as well. They do not want to see Donald Trump, enact an unilateral foreign policy that's going to drag the rest of the world into some sort of crisis. They want to see international law upheld. So on a balance of probabilities here on a sort of

strategic scale like that, these countries have decided that non-participation is probably a better option for them in the near term and in the longer term. But it seems like they want the Strait of Hormuz open as well. Kind of as Mark Carney was in London this week's speaking with British Prime Minister Kier Starmour. Well, Mark, let me instead you're a very well welcome back here at Downing Street. It's really good to have you. Happy birthday. Thank you.

Both leaders have been pretty clear not wanting to get pulled into the offensive operations, but they're clear also about the economic importance of getting that straight open. It is obviously a difficult question. That goes without saying in relation to how you safeguard maritime traffic through the straits. Everybody knows the geography and the risks. but we are working and discussing that with the US, with Gulf partners, and with the Europeans, and I discussed that. What else are we hearing from the leaders about that?

Well, we're hearing a lot of different things at different levels of, you know, stridens, right? Some of the most strident opponents to this are the leaders of countries that are firmly ensconced in the European Union, right? France and Germany. We are not party to the conflict. And therefore, France will never take part in operations to open or liberate the Strait of Hormuz in the current context. We are ready to ensure safe passage through the Straits of Hormuz diplomatically. However, there will be no military participation.

They enjoy full participation in the EU marketplace and are to some degree shielded from Trump's retaliation. The further you get from that protective environment, the quieter you see the leaders approach. Ikeir Starmer of the United Kingdom sits outside of the European Union and wants to have strong, productive, constructive economic relations with the United States. And so has taken a softer line. Mark Carney, Canada, of course, is the most vulnerable to U.S. retaliation. And for the last two, two and a half weeks, he has been silent on the matter. What about in the countries of Asia? I mean, that's where a lot of the oil from St. Hermuz is going. And it's causing a lot of of acute pressures. I mean, in Sri Lanka, they're rationing fuel. It's a four-day work week.

Bangladesh has closed universities. India is suffering. And some countries say they might only have enough oil for a few weeks. How much pressure is on them and other allies to get this thing opened? Well, there's enormous pressure around the world, across the board. The examples you cited from India and Sri Lanka are considerable. This is especially acute for India that doesn't have any significant oil on natural gas production of its own. But their non-action so far is quite interesting to observe. Now, some of those countries like India can get its oil from elsewhere, from Russia, from China, from other actors around the world. So they do have some protection, but that's not going to last very long. But would we expect them to come help the U.S. militarily?

Probably not. U.S. military cooperation with, certainly with China is not in the cards. India may be there's perhaps a closer relationship, but it would take a great deal of effort to get those countries to participate in joint operations together. One of the great things about having allies and treating your allies well is that you can call upon them in times of crisis, as the United States should be doing at this moment, but they're not. Now, Canada and other NATO allies have been participating in, you know, freedom of navigation

maritime exercises in the Persian Gulf and in the Indian Ocean since the early 2000s. And those would be perfect partners to call in and call upon it to help out. But that's just not the case right now. And it has nothing to do with the absence of operational experience. It's entirely political. Yeah, and we're hearing from a lot of leaders, and the more blunt way that I'm used to, that it's not our war. I mean, that's what Canada's defense minister, Dave McGinty, was saying on Tuesday.

We're leaving the door open to be, I think, of assistance to any neighboring states that might require such assistance. But we will not be engaging offensively in this war. I want to be very clear. We are not going to be engaging offensively in this war. And the question of the Strait of Hormuz is one that is evolving. It's changing. We're not quite sure what the overture was or is not. So we're going to talk amongst our NATO allies, and we will govern ourselves.

accordingly. German defense minister Boris Pistorius said, What does the world expect? What does Donald Trump expect from, let's say, a handful or two handfuls of European frigates in the strait of Hormuz that the powerful American Navy cannot accomplish there alone? That's the question I ask myself. Does he even point there, Aaron, like, is Trump right, that he doesn't need their help? In literal terms, yes, right? The U.S. Navy can take care of business all of its own. The U.S. Air Force doesn't need help from Germany or the Netherlands or Canada for that matter. But there is benefit to rolling with allies. They can take some of the pressure off of other elements of operational necessities. For example, the United States can do

the kinetic shooting stuff while the European allies plus Canada can take care of logistical elements or something along those lines. That takes cost pressures, that takes operational pressure, off of the U.S. military. And it's not huge, but it does have some benefit. Just as important is the international legitimacy element of it, right? When you roll with allies, you buy yourself international patience, domestic patience, and a degree of credibility associated with a broad basis of operations that looks good and can go far when you're fighting a conflict like this.

And you spread out the risk, I guess, too, of your own. Yes, indeed. And we can look to Afghanistan for an example of that. Certain allies in Afghanistan took on a great deal of risk and suffered a great deal of loss in both blood and treasure. Now, the United States, of course, took on the overwhelming number of casualties, but that broad basis of participation, you know, took pressure off of the United States in those cases. is on track. Expected travel time from Toronto to Montreal, three hours.

Next stop, public consultations in your community. Make your voice heard. Visit altotrain.ca for more information. At Desjardin, we speak business. We speak startup funding and comprehensive game plans. We've mastered made-to-measure growth and expansion advice, and we can talk your ear-off about transferring your business when the time comes.

Because at Desjardin business, we speak the same language you do. do, business. So join the more than 400,000 Canadian entrepreneurs who already count on us and contact Desjardin today. We'd love to talk, business. If the U.S. and if its allies were to join, actually wanted to militarily stop this blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, what would that actually entail? Boy, that's the million dollar question. It would require, at very least, mind sweeping operations, right? clearing the waters, which is probably well within the operational, tactical, military

capabilities of the United States right now. I think what's more challenging is stopping the threats from land. Many of the ships that have been struck thus far, the, which is to say the oil tankers and the cargo vessels that have been struck thus far, have been hit by drones and rockets coming from the Iranian mainland. And that's more problematic for clearing the straits, because it would require kinetic military operations within the borders of Iran itself. That would require their assets, dropping bombs in Iran. It might even require special forces on the ground in Iran, which would increase the risk and take a step up the ladder of escalation in this conflict. So ending it militarily would require an escalation in hostilities. On the other hand,

It is possible to come to some sort of negotiated settlements where Iran and the United States come to some sort of face-saving bargain, walk away and permit the straits to be reopened once again. I mean, you talk about that kinetic action. I mean, there's been a lot of attacks from Israel and U.S. on Iran's military. A lot of leadership has been killed, but it still fully controls the strait. How big a card is it that they're holding here, Iran? It's the biggest card that Iran has, right? We know that Iran cannot strike back against the United States in any meaningful way with conventional weapons, right? Iran is going to lose any conventional slug fest with the United States.

The Strait of Hormuz is the ultimate leverage that Iran has over the global economy. Even just limited military threats from conventional weapons launched from, you know, mountains or something along those lines, can do enormous damage. to the global economy. That is Iran's greatest bit of leverage and it's going for it. It is reaching for that leverage at this time because Tehran is facing an existential threat, right? The regime is facing an existential threat to its very life and it is ratcheting things up as high as it could possibly go. How predictable all that said was this move? Could they have anticipated this in some better way? They should have seen it coming. I don't know how. how they could have forestalled this kind of activity, at least in the short term.

But the absence, the failure to prepare for this kind of Iranian counterpoint, counterbalance, counterpunch, whatever we want to call it, is an enormous strategic mistake, an enormous strategic failure, right? Because the global economy has now been thrown into a kind of turmoil as a result of something that was completely predictable. I don't know how they could have forestalled it, but smarter minds than I in the Pentagon should have been able to see it coming. The capacity of the Pentagon might be a whole other episode for us.

We're not escorting ships to the Strait of Formeuf. Why? How did you not plan for this? We plan for it. We recognize it because ultimately we want to do it sequentially in a way that makes the most sense for what we want to achieve and ensure that we're sending the right signals to the world when we do so. So when Chris Wright speaks or we speak... As much as you talk about the economy being a...

imperiled. I mean, as much as Europe doesn't want to get involved, they do want this over. And earlier this week, British PM Kier Starmor said he was working on some plan with allies to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It'll have to be something which is agreed by as many partners as possible as my strong view. And we're not at that stage yet, but we're working hard. I discussed it with not a needle mission, but something else. Any idea what that might look like? No idea. I mean, your guess is as good as mine. What we have here is a military conflag. aggregation embedded within a political fight between Iran and the United States, embedded within a larger geostrategic problem associated with the last 40s or so years of Iran-U.S.

relations, all within the great power politics of 2006. This is not a simple solution, right? It is embedded in so many different layers of complexity that a simple out is probably not forthcoming, at least not one that doesn't assure the survival of the Iranian regime. What do you think it would take to get Canada involved with this? We've heard Canada's foreign affairs minister, Anita, Nant, saying, blocking the Strait of Hormuz violates the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, unclosed, as well as customary international law, and ships from all countries have the right to pass through.

But the government isn't clarifying what it would do about that. Canada has limited wherewithal to contribute to the patrolling of the Persian Gulf. Canada has limited naval assets. So, you know, theoretically it could contribute, you know, a ship or two or something along those lines in the same way that it's been doing for the last 20 or 25 years. But at very least, we would expect to see Canada get involved if and when major. European allies are involved as well, particularly I'm thinking about the United Kingdom and France. If it's part of a broader NATO operation, Canada will be more willing to do so. Perhaps with the UN Security Council resolution, Canada would find that more amenable to its interests.

But until that kind of thing happens, I would be very skeptical about any Canadian help forthcoming. So we have Europe and Canada saying we're not going to get involved. It's not our war. We have Asian countries who are being affected by this, who are staying out of it. But according to Reuters, the Gulf states, the states around Iran and the Persian Gulf, like Saudi Arabia and Bahrain, they're now urging the U.S. to keep attacking Iran until its ability to threaten the key energy pathway is fully neutralized. What are the Gulf countries doing to protect their interest in the strait? The Gulf countries in the straits are largely dependent on the United States and Saudi Arabia for, for, for countries. protection, right? They have not invested enormously in their own militaries. They don't have a great deal of force projection capability except for Saudi Arabia. And so they need the United States to do

their military work for them. And of course, they have every interest in seeing the Iranian regime fall. But what would that take? That would take American invasion and occupation, much the same way that we saw in 2003 in Iraq. It's very rare to see a regime fall from air power alone. So what they're asking for, these Gulf countries, is quite the order. Let's talk about what's making it through the strait because news is that Iran is still exporting millions of barrels of its own oil. How is this blockade benefiting the regime financially? Well, they're still getting revenues from oil sales and price has gone up.

So that all redounds to the benefit of Tehran right now. They have the ability to allow certain ships to pass and threaten others because, well, They've said it explicitly, and they've said that they are going to target the United States shipping interests and the shipping interest of its allies. And that's well within their capabilities to do. And perhaps even more so, it is the threat to possibly do damage to U.S. and Western allied ships. That is also consequential because it's going to increase the insurance cost of sending those ships through the straits. So, you know, in that sense, Iran benefits from the increase in prices. It increases from the ongoing export of its oil products to its customers around the world.

And much like Russia, it's still finding customers, even in the midst of a war that is intended to bring down the regime itself. Let's go back to Trump and NATO. He issued a warning to NATO on Sunday, saying if there's no response or if it's a negative response, I think it will be very bad for the future of NATO. Really, I'm demanding that these countries come in and protect their own territory because it is their territory. It's the place from which they get their energy and they should come and they should help us protect it. Do Trump's threats against NATO still hold the same power they used to have? No, they don't. And I don't even think they have the same threatening leverage that they had even four months ago, certainly not a year ago, right? Trump's leverage over the European allies has waned, certainly since the first part of his administration. And why is that? Well, because he sort of exhausted many of the levers of pressure on Europe. Last year in 2025, he withdrew American support to Ukraine, cut off financials. to Ukraine. So, you know, that point of leverage is no longer available to Trump. And similarly,

with tariffs, like they have diminishing political effectiveness the longer they go on and the higher the number they get. I mean, what's the meaning of another 20% tariff on a European export that's already priced out of the American market? So the tariff leverage, the economic leverage, the threat to cut off support to Ukraine are not nearly as threatening or as effective as they were in 2025. But does the existential threat that he, that U.S. pulls out of NATO still hang over some of these decisions that allies are making? It does not. And this is a very, very curious twist.

Really? In 2023, the United States Congress passed the defense budget. And embedded within that defense budget bill is a provision that says a president of the United States cannot withdraw from NATO unilaterally. That provision was inserted in there by then senator. Marco Rubio, who is now the Secretary of State. So if Trump wants to, you know, hit the nuclear option with NATO and say the United States is out, well, that would run contrary to American law and he would have a constitutional fight on his hand. And that would raise a whole other series of problems that messes for him to deal with. His plate is already full enough.

Hate to be cynical, but does that stop him? He can try. He can make an effort. It hasn't stopped him with tariffs from doing something that's probably against the law and waiting for the courts to rule. But this would be yet another one of those constitutional fights that he would probably end up losing. So from Iran's perspective, what do you think it takes for them to open the strait to ease this blockade? This war is an existential threat to the regime itself. So the regime would want some sort of guarantee that it's not going to be overthrown. I think that is, is fundamentally what the Iranian regime would want out of some negotiated settlements. Perhaps it's something akin to the Venezuela option, right, where they removed Maduro but left

the rest of the regime in power. But something along those lines would probably be, you know, palatable to whatever is left of the Iranian regime. What kind of sway would China have? Could China have in brokering an endgame to this or a deal with Iran? I mean, China could step in as a sort of responsible partner in the global economy by brokering, negotiating something along those lines, some kind of diplomatic face-saving activity. Yes, China has this kind of diplomatic interest in bringing this war to an end, definitely has an economic interest in acquiring oil at, you know, depressed rates, like as it has been doing from. Russia over the last three or four years. So, you know, it doesn't have, it has an interest in a negotiated solution to the end of this because Iranian oil prices have simply gone up. And that does not work in Beijing's interest. If this goes on longer, does the world just find

alternatives or are we stuck in this mess as long as Iran chooses it to be? We're stuck in this mess as long as the United States and Iran choose to be. right? This could end right now with Donald Trump saying, you know, we're going to open the straits again. Terran, your regime can stay place. And we're going to go back to our respective corners and, you know, and take a break for the next couple of years. Right. This is really entirely upon first Donald Trump and then Iran to ratchet down the pressure. Aaron, how could this end off escalate over the next few weeks? Well, it could escalate in ways that we can predict or in ways that we can't predict. I mean, the predictable ways that it escalates are things like the United States landing those 2,500 Marines on Iranian sovereign territory.

That would amount to an invasion and an occupation. It could escalate through, you know, increased Iranian rocket attacks on shipping. It could escalate in the form of, say, you know, a U.S. aircraft crashing. in Iran and the occupants becoming prisoners. I mean, there are a million different ways for this kind of thing to escalate right now. What I foresee coming, if I can foresee anything in the near future, is either escalation or de-escalation, because the current status quo is not working for anybody. Escalation would involve more military pressure, greater risk, and so on.

De-escalation would require some kind of negotiated settlement. Aaron, thank you very much for taking the time with us. Thank you very much. That's all for today. I'm Jason Marcosoff in for Jamie Poisson. Thank you for listening to Frontburner. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.com.