Michele Kambas, John Irish and Staff reporter
President Emmanuel Macron has ordered an “unprecedented” French naval deployment to the Mediterranean and potentially the critical Strait of Hormuz near Iran as the Middle East war spills over into the wider region.
France’s flagship Charles de Gaulle aircraft carrier and another French warship, which are already in the Mediterranean, will be joined by a further eight frigates and two amphibious helicopter carriers.
“This mobilisation of our navy is unprecedented,” Macron said at a news conference on Monday (Cyprus time) at a military base in Cyprus, days after the island was hit by Iranian-made drones and missiles and NATO-member Turkey shot down a second Iranian missile in two days.
Macron went on to suggest that French warships could join US forces aiming to reopen the narrow Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil is carried. The waterway is currently all but shut down following Iranian missile and drone strikes.
European states have been largely sidelined as the conflict between the US, Israel and Iran has raged, hitting Gulf Arab states and dragging Lebanon into the line of fire after Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah attacked Israel.
But with shipping lanes disrupted and oil prices well above $US100 a barrel, European powers are grappling with how to defend their interests. Announcing the deployment of the Charles de Gaulle last week, Macron said he wanted to build an international coalition in the region to secure commercial shipping routes “essential to the global economy”.
The only non-American nuclear-powered carrier in the world, the “CdG” hosts a fleet of about 20 Rafale fighter aircraft and is seen as a formidable warship despite being much smaller than the giant US Nimitz and Ford classes. It also carries two Hawkeye airborne early warning and control aircraft, two Dauphin search-and-rescue helicopters, and a Caiman multirole helicopter.
The Rafale is considered a capable air-to-air fighter, designed to operate independently with limited external intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance support.
As he visited the Charles de Gaulle on Monday, footage showed the French leader gathering with naval personnel in the carrier’s below-deck hangar to sing the national anthem, La Marseillaise.
Earlier, Macron sought to reassure his Cypriot counterpart after drones hit a British military base on the island in the early stages of the war, and more drones were intercepted last week.
“When Cyprus is attacked, then Europe is attacked,” Macron said after holding talks with President Nikos Christodoulides and Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis in the Cypriot city of Paphos.
Macron said France and its partners would aim to guarantee freedom of navigation and maritime security with a “purely defensive, purely escort mission” for container ships and oil tankers, which would begin “as soon as possible after the most intense phase of the conflict has ended to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz”.
The European Union’s main naval activities in the region centre on Aspides – “shields” in Greek – a Red Sea naval mission launched in early 2024 to guard vessels from attack by Iranian-aligned Houthi militants backing Palestinian militant group Hamas in its war with Israel.
“I will also add my voice to the rest of my European colleagues to reinforce the Aspides operation with more vessels,” Mitsotakis, the Greek prime minister, said. “There are few of us who are participating, but here too we will need to demonstrate our European solidarity more practically.”
Britain, however, is struggling to send a single warship to the region despite the drone strike on RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus. Last week, several days into the war and weeks after the US began its military build-up in the Middle East, Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced that destroyer HMS Dragon would be made ready – but the warship has yet to leave Portsmouth.
As a political row broke out over the government’s alleged foot-dragging, it emerged that just two of the Royal Navy’s six destroyers – including Dragon – were active, while only two of the UK’s seven frigates were currently operational.
The London Times reported that the navy is now the smallest it has been since the English Civil War, and quoted former naval chief Lord West, warning: “We have steadily sliced away, and we have ended up with a navy that isn’t able to do what is expected of it.”
Reuters with staff reporter
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