UK Hosts 40-Nation Summit on Hormuz as US Sits Out Iran Crisis Talks

Forty nations gathered virtually under UK leadership Thursday to tackle the first complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz in recorded history, a crisis that has pushed American gasoline above $4 a gallon and sent stock futures sliding, even as the United States declined a seat at the table.

UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper chaired the summit at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London, convening foreign ministers from France, Germany, Italy, Canada, the United Arab Emirates, India, and Japan, among others. The coalition vowed to pursue "the collective mobilisation of our full range of diplomatic and economic tools" to achieve what it called a "safe and sustained opening" of the waterway. Cooper accused Iran of having "hijacked an international shipping route to hold the global economy hostage."

The stakes are not abstract. Roughly 13 million barrels of crude oil and natural gas per day, representing about 20% of the world's supply, typically flow through the 22-nautical-mile-wide chokepoint between Iran and Oman. The Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas described the current stoppage as the first full closure in the waterway's modern history, estimating the disruption is three to five times larger than any previous geopolitically driven oil supply shock. The International Energy Agency announced the release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves in an effort to cushion markets that have already forced U.S. retail gasoline above $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022. S&P 500 and Dow Jones futures fell nearly 1% in the immediate aftermath of Trump's national address on April 1, with Nasdaq futures dropping more than 1%.

While the summit's focus remained on political and diplomatic options rather than military ones, the glaring absence of Washington shaped the entire tenor of the talks. Trump has stated openly that securing the strait is not America's responsibility, adding that the waterway would "open up naturally" once the war concludes and that the U.S. does not "need" it. Secretary of State Marco Rubio called allies' overall response to the Iran war "very disappointing" and suggested Trump would "reexamine" U.S. commitments to NATO partners when the fighting ends. Trump has separately labeled NATO a "paper tiger" and raised the prospect of withdrawing from the alliance entirely.

Iran achieved the closure not through a conventional naval blockade but by deploying cheap drones to threaten commercial vessels, causing maritime traffic to crater. The disruption followed U.S.-Israeli military strikes launched on February 28, which included the killing of Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Iran has claimed authority over the strait since the 1979 Islamic Revolution and threatened closure repeatedly during past crises; the Tanker War of the 1980s drew U.S. naval forces into the Gulf during the Iran-Iraq conflict. No previous confrontation produced a full stoppage.

About 80% of the oil that transited the strait in 2025 was bound for Asian markets, with China, India, and Japan as the principal importers. That asymmetry complicates the coalition's leverage calculus: the countries most economically exposed to the closure are also among those most reluctant to take actions that might antagonize Tehran.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced the summit on Wednesday, acknowledged the effort would "not be easy." The coalition's communiqué stopped short of naming specific enforcement mechanisms, convoy commitments, or rules of engagement, leaving open the central question of whether diplomatic pressure alone can reopen a chokepoint that Iran has effectively weaponized at minimal cost.