{"id":350050,"date":"2026-03-17T03:09:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T03:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/350050\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T03:09:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T03:09:06","slug":"ireland-will-not-join-mission-to-reopen-strait-of-hormuz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/350050\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland will not join mission to reopen Strait of Hormuz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Taoiseach has ruled out Irish involvement<\/a> in any EU mission to reopen the strategic oil route in the Strait of Hormuz ahead of his visit to the White House on St Patrick’s Day<\/a>, as the US president piled pressure on European countries to assist America.<\/p>\n

\n Miche\u00e1l Martin will meet with Donald Trump in the Oval Office on Tuesday morning ahead of the traditional shamrock ceremony.\n <\/p>\n

\n Mr Trump\u00a0has been putting pressure on its EU allies<\/a> to carry out a mission to reopen the vital Strait of Hormuz, a key artery in the global supply chain, with 20% of oil going through the waterway.<\/p>\n

\n However, Mr Martin ruled out any Irish involvement.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cWe don\u2019t have that offensive military capacity in any shape or form, so obviously its not something that\u2019s on our agenda,\u201d Mr Martin said.\n <\/p>\n

Other states refuse to send warships\u00a0<\/p>\n

Other European countries also rejected calls to send warships<\/a> to the Strait of Hormuz, despite threats from Trump that Nato faces \u201ca very bad future\u201d if members fail to help reopen the vital waterway.<\/p>\n

Germany ruled out participation in any military activity, including efforts to reopen the strait. The country\u2019s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, said:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n This is not our war, we have not started it\n <\/p>\n

Italy\u2019s foreign minister, Antonio Tajani, said that \u201cdiplomacy needs to prevail\u201d and his country was involved in no naval missions that could be extended to the area.<\/p>\n

Australia, France, and Japan have also said they had no plans to send warships.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump had called on other countries to enter the war by sending ships to the strait to protect commercial vessels and unblock oil shipments.<\/p>\n

Catherine Connolly’s comments\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n The Taoiseach was also pressed on whether comments by\u00a0President Catherine Connolly<\/a> placed an obligation on him to declare the war in Iran as illegal.<\/p>\n

Ms Connolly last week said the\u00a0war in the Middle East constitutes \u201cdeliberate assaults on international law<\/a>\u201d and affirmed Ireland\u2019s constitutional commitment to peace.<\/p>\n

\n Mr Martin said he did not feel pressurised by those comments ahead of his White House visit.\u00a0\n <\/p>\n

\u201cSuccessive Irish Governments have pursued and supported a rules-based approach to global conflict,\u201d Mr Martin said.<\/p>\n

\n \u201cThe world is in a very challenging situation and no one likes war. We certainly don\u2019t as a country and we want a specific resolution,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n

\n The Taoiseach said he did not have a specific gameplan for meeting with Mr Trump.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cI don\u2019t have time for that,\u201d Mr Martin said.\u00a0\u201cWe have a broad position as a country.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n

We\u2019re confident in our contribution to America on a number of fronts.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n The Taoiseach acknowledged that politics is \u201cunpredictable\u201d but said he is looking forward to his engagement with Mr Trump.\n <\/p>\n

\n Mr Martin said he did not expect to be ambushed by Mr Trump, when asked about previous difficult encounters in the White House for Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Cyril Ramaphosa.\n <\/p>\n

\n \u201cThis is a week in which, what we\u2019re essentially doing and we have been doing for many, many years is honouring, affirming a very historic relationship between the United States and Ireland,\u201d Mr Martin said.\n <\/p>\n

Tadgh McNally, Political Reporter in Washington DC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Taoiseach has ruled out Irish involvement in any EU mission to reopen the strategic oil route in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":350051,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[969,61,11829,60,43,63762],"class_list":["post-350050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-donald-trump","tag-ie","tag-iran","tag-ireland","tag-news","tag-st-patricks-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/350051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}