Foreign Minister Penny Wong has spoken after joining a meeting of more than 40 countries regarding the Strait of Hormuz.<\/p>\n
She said the meeting was “part of Australia’s support for international efforts to ensure critical waterways are not held hostage by the Iranian regime”.<\/p>\n
“Iran’s de facto closure of the Strait, coupled with its attacks on commercial vessels, civilian infrastructure, including oil and gas facilities, is causing unprecedented energy supply shocks and impacting oil and fuel prices,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Iran is deliberately inflicting economic pain on communities worldwide, including the Indo-Pacific, with the costs borne disproportionately by the most vulnerable.<\/p>\n
“Australia joined partners in condemning the Iranian regime’s weaponisation of the Strait of Hormuz.”<\/p>\n
She said the ministers in the meeting urged Iran to act in line with UN resolutions affirming the freedom of the seas for non-military vessels.<\/p>\n
“The focus of last night’s meeting was diplomatic and civilian initiatives countries could pursue to make the Strait of Hormuz accessible and safe. Ministers agreed on the importance of continued coordination and collective action,” Wong said.<\/p>\n
“Australia is not taking offensive action against Iran and we are not deploying troops on the ground in Iran.<\/p>\n
“The Australian Government continues to support de-escalation and the resolution of this conflict.<\/p>\n
“The longer this war goes on, the more significant the impact on the global economy will be.”<\/p>\n
Strikingly, she did not mention the US or Israel in the statement, though their current warmaking is what triggered Iran’s closure of the strait.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Foreign Minister Penny Wong has spoken after joining a meeting of more than 40 countries regarding the Strait…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":581589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-581588","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=581588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/581588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/581589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=581588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=581588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=581588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}