Macron Leads European Push to Reopen Hormuz, French Soldier Killed in Lebanon
A deadly attack on a UN peacekeeping patrol and a global energy crisis converge in a defining week for French foreign policy
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This week
🇱🇧French soldier killed in Lebanon
🇮🇷Macron and allies push to open Hormuz
🇱🇧French soldier killed in Lebanon
So to start off the week, some sad news;
This week saw a French peacekeeper being killed and three others wounded after a UN patrol came under attack in Southern Lebanon.
With all four being part of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), they came under small-arms fire while on Patrol, which Emmanuel Macron blamed on Hezbollah, the Iran-backed radical paramilitary group.
“Everything suggests that responsibility for this attack lies with Hezbollah. France demands that the Lebanese authorities immediately arrest the perpetrators and take their responsibilities alongside Unifil.”
- Emmanuel Macron commenting on the event in Lebanon
A UN spokesperson blamed the attack on “non-state actors” and urged all parties to “respect the cessation of hostilities and to cease fire”. Meanwhile, the Lebanese government announced it would bring the perpetrators to action as Hezbollah calls for nobody to jump to conclusions.
🇮🇷Macron and allies push to open Hormuz
This past Friday, Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer chaired a video conference with 30 European, Asian, and Middle Eastern leaders with one simple goal: to organise a multinational force that would be deployed to the Strait of Hormuz and stabilise the situation, once Donald Trump’s Iran-US-Israel war is over.
With Donald Trump’s misguided geopolitical mess having begun on February 28, Iran quickly shut down the strait the moment fighting broke out. This was done both to apply pressure to America through direct economic punishment and through international reaction.
As a result of all this, global energy prices have spiked over the last two months and Trump’s America looks even more isolated than ever. To make things worse than the shaky ceasefires being put in place, the US is now running its own blockade on Iranian ports as a reaction to the Iranian blockade of the Strait.
Europe, as a result of America’s war, is staring down inflation, food shortages, and the prospect of grounded flights as jet fuel dries up. Iran did announce on Friday that it would reopen Hormuz for the duration of the ceasefire, which Macron acknowledged “goes in the right direction,” but the French President made it clear that’s not enough.
“We all call for the immediate, unconditional, and full reopening of the Strait of Hormuz by all parties. We call for the restoration of the conditions of free passage that were in effect before the war and full respect for the law of the sea,”
Macron also drew a hard line against any deal that would effectively turn a global waterway into a private tollbooth to the financial benefit of any one country: “We all oppose any restrictions or system of agreements that would, in effect, amount to an attempt to privatise the strait and, of course, any toll system.”
French Foreign Minister, Jean Noël Barrot, added further justification to the coalition by highlighting the damage that was being caused by the ongoing Crisis: “The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has major consequences for the global economy, and therefore for the daily lives of French citizens and French businesses"
Starmer confirmed that around a dozen countries are ready to contribute assets to a defensive mission to maintain the strait’s opening, with military chiefs set to meet next week at the UK’s Northwood headquarters. A broader London summit on Hormuz is expected to follow shortly after.
Germany’s Friedrich Merz, who has shown an initial reluctance similar to Ukraine, said Berlin is “willing in principle to take part”, while adding that Germany is “still very far from that.” French officials were also unambiguous on one point: Washington, as a belligerent in the conflict, should have no role in this mission.
This will be due to a lack of trust in the American president and the American political system right now, and a desire to avoid any unnecessary inflammatory actions by an increasingly unstable Donald Trump.
The Élysée framed the whole effort as a “third way between maximum US pressure on Iran and a resumption of war.” With over 20,000 seafarers trapped on hundreds of stranded ships, the stakes are not abstract, and the damage to global economies and oil routes continues to escalate.
For Europe, it’s also a moment to prove it exists diplomatically and geopolitically, with the US government actively going out of its way to repeatedly sideline its European allies, continuing to argue that Europeans are weak and subservient to other global powers.
And for the Americans, it’s also a strong opportunity for an off-ramp to be provided by the Europeans that Trump & co. have mocked and spat on repeatedly for years, with the war having achieved nothing but rolling back the hard-fought wins of the Obama negotiations, and impoverishing the world.
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