ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - The United Kingdom and several key US allies, including France, Germany, Japan and Australia have responded to US President Donald Trump’s call to send warships to the Strait of Hormuz, expressing reluctance about a potential naval deployment.

US President Donald Trump on Saturday said he hopes China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and other countries “will send ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer be a threat by a nation that has been totally decapitated.”

During a press conference on Monday, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that the UK “will not be drawn into the wider war.”

“We have to reopen the Strait of Hormuz to ensure stability in the market. That is not a simple task. So we’re working with all of our allies, including our European partners, to bring together a viable, collective plan that can restore freedom of navigation in the region as quickly as possible and ease the economic impacts,” the British prime minister added.

UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband on Sunday said London is “intensively looking” at ways to help reopen the route, including deploying unmanned systems to search for naval mines, but stopped short of committing to a warship deployment.

French President Emmanuel Macron on Sunday said he held a phone call with his Iranian counterpart Masoud Pezeshkian, during which he stressed: “Freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz must be restored as quickly as possible.”

Last week, Macron said that France’s objective is “to maintain a strictly defensive stance“ adding that they are “in the process of setting up a purely defensive, purely escort mission” to enable “the escort of container ships and tankers to gradually reopen the Strait of ​Hormuz,” as soon as the most intense phase of the conflict has ended.

Germany has also voiced doubts about expanding European naval operations to the strait, with a spokesperson for German Chancellor Friedrich Merz saying on Monday that the conflict is “not NATO's war.”

“NATO is an alliance for the defense of territory” and “the mandate to deploy NATO is lacking” in the current situation, spokesperson Stefan Kornelius said at a presser.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius also stressed that “this is not our war. We have not started it,” adding: “What does … Donald Trump expect a handful or two handfuls of European frigates to do in the Strait of Hormuz that the powerful US Navy cannot do?”

During a parliamentary session on Monday, Japan's Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae said that Tokyo is considering what can be done to protect its ships related in accordance with the country’s laws, noting that no decision has been made yet regarding the dispatch of destroyers.

Australia on the other hand has confirmed that it will not be sending a ship to the Strait, with Transport Minister Catherine King saying: “We know how incredibly important that is but that's not something we've been asked or we're contributing to.”

The tensions follow a sharp escalation in the Middle East after US and Israeli strikes on Iran on February 28 that killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.

Tehran has since threatened to shut down the strait, one of the world’s most important oil transit routes.

Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters warned that “any vessel whose oil cargo or the vessel itself belongs to the United States, the Zionist regime or their hostile allies will be considered legitimate targets.”